His eyes lighted savagely. But Sheila did not catch their expression for at that moment she was looking at his shadow on the floor. How long, how grotesque, it seemed, and forbidding—like its owner.
“So he’s got everything he wants but his health. What made him lose that?”
“How should I know?”
“Just lost it, I reckon,” said Dakota subtly. “Cares and Worry?”
“I presume. His health has been failing for about ten years.”
Sheila was looking straight at Dakota now and she saw his face whiten, his lips harden. And when he spoke again there was a chill in his voice and a distinct pause between his words.
“Ten years,” he said. “That’s a long time, isn’t it? A long time for a man who has been losing his health. And yet——” There was a mirthless smile on Dakota’s face—“ten years is a longer time for a man in good health who hasn’t been happy. Couldn’t your father have doctored—gone abroad—to recover his health? Or was his a mental sickness?”
“Mental, I think. He worried quite a little.”
Dakota turned from her, but not quickly enough to conceal the light of savage joy that flashed suddenly into his eyes.
“Why!” exclaimed Sheila, voicing her surprise at the startling change in his manner; “that seems to please you!”