"Attaching!" he broke out with a suppressed irritation she had never seen—a strange hate of her, Eleanor, for saying such a thing. "Arrogant, inflexible, using all her gifts—her brains and her incredible beauty—just to advance her own selfish ends!"
An impulse based partly on pure loyalty but partly on the idea that she could improve her position by showing her friend was not quite a monster made her answer, "You wouldn't believe, Dan, how if she really cares for you she can be tender almost clinging."
"For God's sake don't let's talk of her!" said O'Bannon, and it was on this note that they parted.
He wrote to her only once, though his letters to his mother were always at her disposal. She saw a great deal of the old lady, who developed a mild pleurisy as soon as her son's back was turned and didn't want Dan told of it. Eleanor spent most of that hot August taking care of her.
"I want him to have an uninterrupted holiday," said Mrs. O'Bannon firmly. "He hasn't been well. He doesn't sleep as he ought to, and he's cross, and you know it's not like Dan to be cross."
On the last day of August he was back, lean and sunburned, announcing himself to be in excellent condition. His first question was about the Thorne case.
"Are you anxious about it?" said his mother.
"Not a bit. They can't reverse us," he answered.
After Labor Day Lydia moved back to her Long Island house, and she was there when the decision in her case was handed down. The verdict of the lower court was sustained. It was a great blow to her—perhaps the first real blow she had ever received. She had so firmly made up her mind that the former verdict had been the result of undue influence of the district attorney that she had thought it impossible that the higher court would uphold it. Another triumph for "that man!" The idea of punishment was horrible to her—to be fined as a criminal. She still did not conceive it a possibility that she could be sent to prison.
"I can think of lots of ways in which I'd rather spend a thousand dollars," was her only comment.