“An old maid,” Hugh laughed heartily. “You are only a baby, and just beginning to see the world.”
“I’m past eighteen—please remember that, and——”
Her father turned her face upward to look at her quizzically.
“Who is the man, Elinor?” Hugh asked playfully.
“What—what do you mean, Daddy?” She could not quite hide a feeling of alarm, but her fears were calmed as her father queried: “Young Bronlee?”
“How ridiculous!” she exclaimed impatiently. “Does the fact of my having expressed an opinion, necessitate there being anyone in particular? And why should you immediately suggest Paul Bronlee? No,” and she shook her head sagely, “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Dad, but I shall never marry Paul Bronlee even if he is one of ‘the’ Bronlees and so desirable in your own and mother’s eyes. He bores me to death. In a year’s time, I should be obliged to divorce him. But why discuss anything so silly? Here we are home at last and I’m dead tired.”
Her father walked with her to the foot of the stairs and kissed her gently.
“Hurry up into slumber-land; I’m going to have another cigar. We can talk about your marriage another time. I don’t want to think of losing my girl yet, nor must she think of leaving. Good-night, dear.”
“Good-night, Dad,” she replied as she returned his caress perfunctorily, anxious to hurry away, to be alone.
Elinor Benton closed her door softly, though her impulse was to slam it. She flung her opera coat at a couch across the room and kicked a silver slipper into another. She stamped the still shod foot.