"Yes, you might—but Hugh wouldn't."
She dismissed the subject as one in which she took only a secondary interest to say that old Mrs. Billing was coming to lunch, and that Gladys and I should have to take that repast up-stairs. She was never direct in her denunciations of her father's second marriage. She brought them in by reference and innuendo, like a prisoner who keeps in mind the fact that walls have ears. She gave me to understand, however, that she considered Mrs. Billing a witch out of "Macbeth" or a wicked old vulture—I could take my choice of comparisons—and she hated having her in the house. She wouldn't do it only that, in ways she could hardly understand, Mrs. Billing was the power behind the throne. She didn't loathe her stepmother, she said in effect, so much as she loathed her father's attitude toward her. I have never forgotten the words she used in this connection, dropping her voice and glancing about her, afraid she might be overheard. "It's as if God himself had become the slave of some silly human woman just because she had a pretty face." The sentence not only betrayed the Brokenshire attitude of mind toward J. Howard, but sent a chill down my back.
Having finished my notes and addressed them I rose to return to Gladys; but there was still an unanswered question in my mind. I asked it, standing for a minute beside the bed:
"Then you don't want me to go away?"
She arched her lovely eyebrows. "Go away? What for?"
"Because of the danger of my marrying Hugh."
She gave a little laugh. "Oh, there's no danger of that."
"But there is," I insisted. "He's asked me a number of times to go with him to the nearest clergyman, and settle the question once for all."
"Only you don't do it. There you are! What father doesn't want doesn't happen; and what he does want does. That's all there is to be said."