“Beatrice is made of silent stuff,” she declared. “I should never be afraid of her. All the same, I wish I could find out just where she is. It would look better if we were living together.”
The professor shook his head sadly.
“She left us of her own free will,” he said, “and I don't believe, Elizabeth, that she would ever come back again. She knew very well what she was doing. She knew that our views of life were not hers. She didn't know half but she knew enough. You were quite right in what you said just now; Beatrice was more like her mother, and her mother was a good woman.”
“Really!” Elizabeth remarked, insolently.
“Don't answer like that,” he blustered, striking the table. “She was your mother, too.”
The woman's face was inscrutable, hard, and flawless behind the little cloud of tobacco smoke. The man began to tremble once more. Every time he ventured to assert himself, a single look from her was sufficient to quell him.
“Elizabeth,” he muttered, “you haven't a heart, you haven't a soul, you haven't a conscience. I wonder—what sort of a woman you are!”
“I am your daughter,” she reminded him, pleasantly.
“I was never quite so bad as that,” he went on, taking a large silk handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing his forehead. “I had to live and times were hard. I have cheated the public, perhaps. I haven't been above playing at cards a little cleverly, or making something where I could out of the weaker men. But, Elizabeth, I am afraid of you.”
“Men are generally afraid of the big stakes,” she remarked, flicking the ash from her cigarette. “They will cheat and lie for halfpennies, but they are bad gamblers when life or death—the big things are in the balance. Bah!” she went on. “Father, I want Jerry Gardner to come and see me.”