“Good Heavens, Frothingham! What have I got to do with it? You ain’t engaged to me. She’s got the right to say what she’ll do with herself.”
Frothingham rose. “I was under the impression, sir, that I was dealing with a gentleman who would appreciate the due of a gentleman.”
Hollister’s eyebrows came down, and a cruel line suddenly appeared at each corner of his mouth. Just then Mrs. Hollister entered. Intuitively she leaped to the right conclusion. “The idiot!” she said to herself. “Why didn’t he come to me?” Then she said smoothly, almost playfully, to “the idiot”: “Has Catherine been troubling you with her mood this morning?”
Frothingham’s face brightened—her mood! Then there was hope.
“You ought not to pay any attention to her moods,” Mrs. Hollister went on with a smile. “She’s very nervous at times. But it passes.”
“She told me flat that our engagement was off,” said Frothingham. “I came to her father, naturally. She seemed to be in earnest.”
Mrs. Hollister continued to smile. “Don’t concern yourself about the matter, Lord Frothingham,” she replied in her kindliest voice. “Catherine will be all right again to-morrow at the latest. She has been doing too much lately for a young girl under the excitement of an engagement.”
Hollister, who had been looking hesitatingly from his wife to Frothingham, went to the wall and pressed an electric button. When the servant appeared he said: “Please ask Miss Catherine to come here.”
Mrs. Hollister turned on him, her eyes flashing. “Catherine is in no state to bear——”
Hollister returned her look calmly, then repeated his order. The servant looked uneasily from the husband to the wife, saw that Mrs. Hollister was not going to speak, made a deprecating bow, and withdrew. In a few minutes—it seemed a long time to the three, waiting in silence—Catherine appeared. Her eyes were swollen slightly, but that was the only sign of perturbation. Mrs. Hollister said to Frothingham: “I think it would be best that her father and I talk with her alone first.”