“Don’t make me any more ashamed than I am,” she pleaded humbly.
“No, I can’t release you,” he said with cold fury. “I can’t permit myself to be trifled with.” He knew that he was taking the wrong tack, that he ought to play the wounded lover. But his feeling for her was so small, and his anger so great, that he could not.
She was almost hysterical. She felt as though she were struggling desperately against some awful force that was imprisoning her. “Let me go. Please, let me go,” she gasped.
“No!” he said, arrogance in his voice—the arrogance of a man used to women who let men rule them.
Her eyes flashed. “Then I release myself!” she exclaimed haughtily, with a change of front so swift that it startled him. “And don’t you dare ever speak of it to me again!”
She slowly left the room, her head high. But her haughtiness subsided as rapidly as it had risen, and by the time she reached her own apartment she was ready to fling herself down for a miserable cry—and she did. “If I could only get him out of the house,” she wailed.
Frothingham debated his situation. “The thing to do,” he concluded, “is to go straight off to her father.” He had not yet become convinced that in America man occupies a position in the family radically different from his position in England. He found Hollister writing in his study.
“Mr. Hollister,” he began.
Hollister raised his head until it was tilted so far back that he could see Frothingham through the glasses that were pinching in the extreme end of his long nose. “Oh—Lord Frothingham—yes!” He laid down his pen. “What can I do for you?”
Frothingham seated himself in a solemn dignity that hid his nervousness. “For several weeks your daughter and I have been engaged. We—we——”