The Oldest Flame by Elisabeth Grace Foley Page A

take it to heart.”
    She smiled suddenly. “You are becoming a
young woman, Rose, and I know you are looking forward to love.
Every girl does. But it is important for you to always ask yourself
whether a man’s professed love for you is something that thinks
only of itself—of himself. There are many people who can love
selfishly, but that kind of love is not always the truest, even
though sometimes it can appear splendid on the outside.”
    “You sound so serious!” said Rose, wide-eyed,
her voice half alarm, half wondering.
    “I am serious. But I am also sure that
you will find a good man. For now, I only want you to remember—”
Mrs. Meade hesitated. “Some young girls might think it romantic, a
man committing a desperate act—a crime, even—for the sake of love.
They might be flattered to think he had done it for their sake. But
at heart it is only selfishness—a sacrifice of righteousness and
honor so that he might have the thing he wanted.”
    She smiled again, a reassuring, motherly
smile, and patted Rose’s hand. “I think you will understand—some
time—what I am trying to say. Will you only promise me you will
remember it?”
    “I’ll try,” said Rose faintly.
    Mrs. Meade rose, and bent to kiss her cheek.
“Thank you, my dear,” she said. Then she moved quietly across the
dim room to the door, went out and closed it behind her.
    “And now,” she said to herself, in the hall,
“I must speak to the Lansburys.”
     
    * * *
     
    The clock in the hotel lobby was chiming a
quarter past twelve when Sheriff Andrew Royal labored up two
flights of the broad red-carpeted staircase as if he were scaling a
mountain, and looked about at the doors for the number of the room
he was seeking. When he found it, he knocked, and in a few seconds
the door was opened by Mr. Lansbury, who stepped aside for him to
enter.
    In spite of the lateness of the hour, there
were three other people in the room—Mrs. Lansbury, Mrs. Meade, and
George Grey. A lamp was burning on the table by which Mrs. Meade
sat, and near it lay a small pile of papers and envelopes. The
demeanor of everyone in the room, and the very silence with which
they had awaited the coming of the sheriff, made it plain that
something had happened, or was about to happen. It was also evident
that both of the Lansburys already knew what it was, but Grey had
not yet been informed, though from the look on his face as he
waited he guessed that it was something serious.
    “Thank you for coming up, Sheriff,” said
Lansbury, shaking his hand. “I have something here which I think
you ought to know about. Mrs. Meade came to me earlier this evening
and confided to me a theory she had about the cause of our fire,
and asked my help in confirming it—and I think we may have done
so.” He glanced down at Mrs. Meade, and spoke to her in a slightly
lower voice, tinged with a note of respect. “Would you like to
explain it first?”
    “It was something you said, in fact,
Andrew, that gave me the illumination,” said Mrs. Meade. “You
remarked quite off-hand during our conversation earlier that ‘where
there’s smoke, there’s fire,’ just as I was thinking over something
that puzzled me about what happened in the upstairs hall that
night. And suddenly it all flashed on me. I remember now that when
I stepped out of my room that night there was already a good deal
of smoke in the hallway. That did not seem strange to me, of
course, because I knew there was a fire in the house. But now I
recall clearly that when I turned and went along the hall to Miss
Parrish’s room— away from the top of the staircase, which led
down to where the fire was—the smoke actually grew thicker. That
was why I could not stay long by her door myself. And when I sent
Mark up to try and help her, he was nearly suffocated up there in
just a few minutes, while I, going down the stairs, found the smoke
grew lighter as I went down and it was easier to breathe.
    “Do you see what I