They looked at each other in silence—measuring each other—or, rather, daughter submitting calmly to her father’s keen, measuring eyes, while she wondered how a man so strong and daring as he could have such a pitiful weakness as snobbishness. At last Richmond said pleasantly: “Beatrice, I’ve come to take you back home.”
She advanced to a chair, into which she dropped with graceful deliberation. “I thought you had come to apologize.” Her tone was a subtle provocation.
He flushed a little—a faint glow upon his dry, wrinkled face with its huge forehead, its huge nose and its dwindling and wily little chin. “That, too,” said he with astonishing self-restraint. “I was so mad yesterday that I lost my head. My digestion isn’t what it once was. My nerves are frayed out.”
“You admit you wronged Roger Wade?”
Richmond winced, but held to the game he had decided upon. “I admit I know nothing about him—except, of course, what D’Artois said. But I can’t honestly say I believe in him. I still feel he is a fortune hunter.”
“I can understand that,” said Beatrice, unbending a little. “I suspected him, myself.”
“Trust to your intuition, Beatrice,” cried Richmond cordially. “It always guides right.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” observed his daughter. “For my intuition was that he was simple as a baby about money matters. The nasty suspicion came afterwards—when I was piqued because he had refused me.”
Richmond made a large, generous gesture, strove—not unsuccessfully—to accompany it with a large, generous expression. “Well—that’s all past and gone. Are you ready to go home?”
“I am not going home, father,” said Beatrice in an ominously quiet tone.