She went on with the utmost deliberation. She made not the smallest emotional appeal. Vickers had never heard a woman speak more calmly.
“I see that you think that I ought to have been grateful for a home. I wasn’t grateful. I have worked my passage. It was not desire for a home that has kept me here year after year, but a thing perhaps you don’t know very much about, Bob—a sense of duty. At this moment I have no idea whether your father is a ruined man, or whether his mind is slightly unhinged on the subject of money. He will not cut down the household in the smallest particular, and yet there are times when I can not get enough money from him to pay the servants’ wages. It is not an easy task, Bob, and such as it is I make it over to you.”
He glanced at the room—at her own extravagant clothes.
“Do you mean to say—” he began, but she interrupted him.
“Don’t pretend to be surprised. As if I had not written to you often enough, as long as I had any hope you would come back.”
“I never got your letters.”
“Odd, for you always cashed my checks.”
Vickers was silent. His experiment began to look less promising. It irked him inexpressibly to be obliged to bear such a tone from any one, more especially a woman. If Lee’s villainy had been on a larger scale he could have supported it better.
“You have got to stay at home, Bob,” she said firmly.
He could not help smiling. “It does not sound so alarming,” he answered.