"I'm not blaming you." She looked at him honestly. "I'd just rather have
you care about me than marry anybody else."
He kissed her, with a curious mingling of exultation and despair. He
left her there when he went away that afternoon, a rather downcast young
figure, piling up records and card-indexes, and following him to the
door with worshiping, anxious eyes. Later on in the afternoon Joey,
wandering in from Clayton's office on one of his self-constituted
observation tours, found her crying softly while she wiped her
typewriter, preparatory to covering it for the night.
"Somebody been treatin' you rough?" he asked, more sympathetic than
curious.
"What are you doing here, anyhow?" she demanded, angrily. "You're always
hanging around, spying on me."
"Somebody's got to keep an eye on you."
"Well, you don't."
"Look here," he said, his young-old face twitching with anxiety. "You
get out from under, kid. You take my advice, and get out from under.
Something's going to fall."
"Just mind your own business, and stop worrying about me. That's all."
He turned and started out.
"Oh, very well," he said sharply. "But you might take a word of warning,
anyhow. That cousin of yours has got an eye on you, all right. And we
don't want any scandal about the place."
"We? Who are 'we'?"
"Me and Mr. Clayton Spencer," said Joey, smartly, and went out, banging
the door cheerfully.
Anna climbed the hill that night wearily, but with a sense of relief
that Rudolph had not been waiting for her at the yard gate. She was in
no mood to thrust and parry with him. She wondered, rather dully, what
mischief Rudolph was up to. He was gaining a tremendous ascendency over
her father, she knew. Herman was spending more and more of his evenings
away from home, creaking up the stairs late at night, shoes in hand, to
undress in the cold darkness across the hall.
"Out?" she asked Katie, sitting by the fire with the evening paper.
Conversation in the cottage was almost always laconic.
"Ate early," Katie returned. "Rudolph was here, too. I'm going to quit
if I've got to cook for that sneak any longer. You'd think he had a meal
ticket here. Your supper's on the stove."
"I'm not hungry." She ate her supper, however, and undressed by the
fire. Then she went up-stairs and sat by her window in the gathering
night. She was suffering acutely. Graham was tired of her. He wanted to
get rid of her. Probably he had a girl somewhere else, a lady. Her idea
of the life of such a girl had been gathered from novels.