"Sit down. Sit down. I shall have to stand if you don't, and I'm dog-tired. Didn't you know I loved you, Linda, honest now?"
The girl sank into her chair. She was trying to think of the cruelest way to crush him. She opened her lips once or twice to speak and closed them again. King regarded her immovably, his worn look meeting her vital gaze.
"Your taste in jokes is very poor," she said at last, and her tone was icy, "and you may rest assured that no regard for you will prevent my telling my father exactly what you have said."
"You needn't. He knows it," returned King. His voice, which had brightened, relapsed into nervelessness.
"My father knows it!" The girl could not restrain the exclamation.
"Yes, of course. I believed you did, upon my honor. I've had so little time, you see, and you've been so busy."
He seemed so innocent of offense that her anger gave way to the habitual exasperation.
"Bertram King," she said,—and if there is such a thing as stormy dignity her manner expressed it,—"I believe the grind of business has dried up your brains. I could count on the fingers of one hand the occasions on which you have expressed even approval of me." Her nostrils dilated as she spoke.
Her companion's solemn visage suddenly beamed in a smile. "You remember them, then," he returned, with a pleased naïveté which nearly wrecked her severity; but she held her pose.
"You dared to speak to my dear father—I think you have him mesmerized, I really do—you dared to speak to him seriously of—of—caring for me, when you have criticized nearly every move I have made at home for four years."