“I suppose Gordon has been talking to you,” he complained bitterly. “If that fellow sticks his nose into my affairs he is going to have it pulled!”
“Why shouldn’t he?” she asked.
This was a new tone in her, and one that made him stare at her. Ella had always been the indulgent, approving, excusing sister. The buffer who stood between him and his father’s reproof.
“Why shouldn’t he?” she repeated. “Mr. Gordon should know something of Secret Service work—he himself is an officer of the law. You are either working lawfully, in which case it doesn’t matter what he knows, or unlawfully, and the fact that he knows should make a difference to you.”
He looked at her searchingly.
“Why are you so interested in Gordon—are you in love with him?” he asked.
Her steady eyes did not waver, and only the faintest tinge of pink came to the skin that sleeplessness had paled.
“That is the kind of question that a gentleman does not ask in such a tone,” she said quietly, “not even of his sister. Ray, you are coming back to daddy, aren’t you—to-day?”
He shook his head.
“No. I’m not. I’m going to write to him. I admit I did wrong. I shall tell him so in my letter. I can’t do more than that.”