It was Hilda’s first experience of a man who made capital of disgrace. The few she’d seen so far—men on the dodge, Uncle Hank’s old partner, Tracey Jacox—these spoke differently of anything criminal they had been connected with—or spoke not at all of it. It had grown to seem to Hilda one of the decencies of life to maintain such reserve. Yet Fayte made his queer kind of boasting rather attractive. Like the rest of the household, she didn’t believe he was as black as he painted himself, but it was interesting always to see just how black that would be.
And mixed up with all sorts of talk about dubious stuff he’d been into, dangers he’d run, half crimes he’d committed, Fayte—as the days and weeks went on—showed himself more and more in the character of her admirer. No stop at the pleasant half-way house of friendship; he was as carelessly over-confident in pushing to a more intimate footing with her as he had been in riding up to the Three Sorrows to rustle a whole herd of his father’s cattle. It astonished and rather amused her at first to see how little her wishes in the matter counted with him. The other boys wanted her to like them, were careful not to offend; Fayte was only interested in liking her—if his feeling could be called liking—and he didn’t a bit mind how much he offended. If she showed resentment, aversion, he only laughed and told her that some day she was going to love him just as hard as she hated him now.
Her only defense against this aggressive, almost threatening sentimentality, was to keep up the half-joking quarrels that young people use to cover all sorts of situations. For it seemed to her the two of them were forever together, and that the whole household kept out of their way and left them so. Apparently Fayte had no concerns of his own to interfere with his hanging around. He would follow her from the breakfast table, linger at the schoolroom door till Miss Ferguson had to put an end to the whispered conversation. And when the lessons were over and the girls came out, there he would be lying on his mother’s lounge in the sitting-room, or out in the hammock, a pile of paper-covered novels on floor or ground, a circle of cigarette butts and feathery ashes around him; then, if he didn’t see them first, Maybelle would call him to come and join them, or Mrs. Marchbanks would send him.
Hilda was often at her wit’s end; for there were never any of the other boys about now, whose presence might have helped out; Colonel Marchbanks had put his foot down on “all that sort of fooling,” had told the girls that for the rest of this term they must attend strictly to their lessons; there would be no more of this wasting their time with those young loafers. It was almost, Hilda thought, as though they wanted to throw her with Fayte and keep her out of the way of other people.
Then one afternoon Maybelle, up in Hilda’s bedroom, helping her clean her jewelry, asked with a significant glance:
“These all the rings you’ve got, Hilda?”
“They’re all I have with me,” Hilda said.
“Oh!” Again that queer look from Maybelle. “I thought maybe there was one you weren’t showing. I’ve got one nobody around the house has seen.” She waited for Hilda to say something, then finished, “But I’ll let you see it—if you want to.” She fumbled a moment at the neck of her blouse, got hold of a little ribbon there, drew out and slipped on the third finger of her left hand a solitaire of considerable size. Hilda stared at it.
“Why, Maybelle—where did you get it? It looks like—”
She broke off, and Maybelle said with one of her sly smiles.