"Of what you say is going to happen."
"If you want to do yourself and me the greatest possible damage, you'll hint to him what I've said. Do you understand?"
"It isn't fair not to warn him," she insisted. And she released herself from his arms and faced him defiantly. "I tell you, I love him, father!"
"Was ever parent so cursed in his children!" cried Fosdick. "I'm in the house of my enemies. I tell you, Amy, you are to keep your mouth shut!" He struck the floor sharply with his cane. "I will be obeyed, do you hear?"
"And I tell you, father," retorted Amy, "that I'm going to warn him. He's straight and honest, and he loves me and he has done things for me, for us, that make us his debtor."
Fosdick threw up his arms in angry impotence. "Do your damnedest!" he cried. "After all, what can you tell him? You can only throw him into a fever and put him in a worse plight. But I warn you that, if you disobey me, I'll make you pay for it. I'll cut off your allowance. I'll teach you what it means to love and respect a father." And he raged out of the house.
Even as her father went, Amy felt in the foundation of her defiance the first tremors of impending collapse. She rushed upstairs to the telephone; she would not let this impulse to do the generous, no, simply the decent, thing ooze away as her impulses of that sort usually did, if she had or took time to calculate the personal inconvenience from executing them. After a rather common and most pleasing human habit, she regarded herself as generous, and was so regarded, because she had generous impulses; to execute them was, therefore, more or less superfluous. In this particular instance, however, she felt that impulse was not enough; there must be action.
"Is it you?" came in Alois's voice, just in time to stimulate her flagging energy. "I was about to call you up."
"I must see you at once," said Amy, with feverish eagerness. "I've got something very, very important to say to you." She hesitated, decided that she must commit herself beyond possibility of evasion—"something about an attempt to do you a great injury."
"Oh!" His tone was curiously constrained; it seemed to her that there was terror, guilt, in it. "Shall I come up? I've just found out I must sail for Europe at noon."