"If you'd been less anxious to please," suggested he bitterly, "and more courageous about being your own real self, you'd not have got yourself into this mess."
"Ah—but that wasn't my fault," replied she absently. "It was the fault of my training. Ever since I can remember I've been taught to be on my guard, lest the men shouldn't like me." In her new freedom she looked back tranquilly upon the struggle she was at last emancipated from, and philosophized about it. "What a mistake mothers make in putting worry about getting a husband into their daughters' heads. Believe me, Grant, that dread makes wretched what ought to be the happiest time of a girl's life."
"Rita," he pleaded, "stop this nonsense, and say you'll marry me."
"No, thanks," said she. "I've chosen. And I'm well content."
She gave him a last tantalizing look and went out on the veranda, to go along it to the outdoor stairway. Arkwright gazed after her through a fierce conflict of emotions. Was she really in earnest? Could it be possible that Josh Craig had somehow got a hold over her? "Or, is it that she doesn't trust me, thinks I'd back down if she were to throw him over and rely on me?" No, there was something positively for Craig in her tone and expression. She was really intending to marry him. Grant shuddered. "If she only realized what marrying a man of that sort means!" he exclaimed, half aloud. "But she doesn't. Only a woman who has been married can appreciate what sort of a hell for sensitive nerves and refined tastes marriage can be made."
"Ah—Mr. Arkwright!"
At this interruption in a woman's voice—the voice he disliked and dreaded above all others—he startled and turned to face old Madam Bowker in rustling black silk, with haughty casque of gray-white hair and ebon staff carried firmly, well forward. Grant bowed. "How d'ye do, Mrs. Bowker?" said he with respectful deference. What he would have thought was the impossible had come to pass. He was glad to see her. "She'll put an end to this nonsense—this nightmare," said he to himself.
Madam Bowker had Williams, the butler, and a maid-servant in her train. She halted, gazed round the room; she pointed with the staff to the floor a few feet from the window and a little back. "Place my chair there," commanded she.
The butler and the maid hastened to move a large carved and gilded chair to the indicated spot. Madam Bowker seated herself with much ceremony.
"Now!" said she. "We will rearrange the room. Bring that sofa from the far corner to the other side of this window, and put the tea-table in front of it. Put two chairs where the sofa was; arrange the other chairs—" And she indicated the places with her staff.