Louise continued to tap-tap her palm with the crop, but she was devoid of words, it appeared.
"Louise!" Laura suddenly sat up straight on the couch and directed a startled, accusatory, yet puzzledly-smiling gaze at the wistful, unseeing and silent girl in the riding habit.
Louise turned her abstracted gaze upon Laura.
"What is it, dear?" she asked. "You said something, didn't you?"
Laura gazed at her with an absorbed smile for nearly a minute. Then she settled back among the pillows.
"No, sweetheart, I haven't said anything," she replied.
Judd prowled about his club that night in the humor of a savage, barking at the club servants, growling at or turning his back upon cronies who addressed him civilly enough, and almost taking the head off one of them who, noticing the baleful Judd mood, cheerfully inquired: "What is it, old chap—gout, liver, the market, or all three?" The market was in part responsible; the entire "list" had gone against him persistently and diabolically from opening to close. But the raking which Mrs. Treharne had given him during their ride on account of his "daughtering" of Louise on the night before was mainly responsible for the bubbling rage which he was taking no pains to conceal and which he was adding to by extraordinarily short-intervalled stops at the club buffet.
And so he'd been hauled over the coals again on account of that high-and-mighty daughter of Tony's, had he? Judd reflected, his thoughts swirling in an alcoholic seethe of self-sympathy. Well, he was getting tired of that sort of thing—d——d tired of it. He hadn't had a minute's peace of his life on his visits at the house on the Drive since the arrival there of that toploftical, sulky, ridiculously haughty daughter of Tony's. Haughty about what? Haughty for what reason? What license had she to be haughty—especially with him, Judd? Wasn't she living in his house? What the d——, then, did she mean by flouting him? Yes, Jesse had been right; she had flouted him since the first day she'd met him. And that wasn't "coming to him;" he didn't deserve it.
Didn't he fairly shower money upon her mother? Didn't her mother have his signed blank checks to fill out at her own sweet will and option? Didn't he humor all of Tony's extravagances without ever a word of complaint? Well, then! What the devil did Tony mean by snarling at him all the time about this daughter of hers that had come along and messed everything up? Anyhow, why shouldn't he have called the young woman "daughter" if he felt like it? That wasn't going to kill her, was it? He had been drinking a little at the time, anyhow, and it was a slip of the tongue; but even if it hadn't been, what was the difference? What right did she have, anyhow, to look at him as if he were a woodtick? He couldn't understand what Jesse saw in her; she was good-looking, of course, but when that was said all was said; she had an unthawable disposition, hadn't she? And a porpoise's cold-bloodedness?