The references came spasmodically and without context, 317 as the little white lady busied herself in waiting on Letty or in the care of her room.
“I haven’t seen him since a short time after the mistress went away.”
Letty felt herself coloring. Though not prudish there were words she couldn’t get used to. Besides which she had never thought that Steptoe.... But Miss Towell pursued her memories.
“It always worried him that I should hold views different from his but I couldn’t submit to dictation, now, could I, dear?”
Once more Letty felt herself awkwardly placed. The only interpretation she could put on Miss Towell’s words referring to moral reformation on her hostess’s part she said, as non-committally as might be: “He’s a good deal of a stickler.”
“He’s been so long in a high position that he becomes—well, I won’t be ’arsh—but he becomes a little harbitrary. That’s where it was. He was a little harbitrary. With a mistress who allowed him a great deal of his own way—well, you can hardly blame him, can you, dear?”
Letty forced herself to accept the linguistic standard of the world. “I suppose if she hadn’t allowed him a great deal of his own way he’d have looked somewhere else.”
“That he could easily have done. He had temptations enough—a man like him. Why, dear, there was a lady in Park Avenue did everything she could that wasn’t positively dishonorable to win him away––”
“He must have been younger and better looking than he is now,” Letty hazarded, bluntly.