The promoter looked up and cleared his throat.
“Ain’t you exaggerating a little, friend?” he ventured blandly.
“Exaggerating!” Enoch jerked up his square jaws, and protruded his under lip, a gesture peculiar to him when he was roused. He focussed a kindling eye on his questioner: “Do you suppose, sir, I do not know what I am talking about? I am not given to making statements which have no foundation.”
“But all that which you speak of, Mr. Crane, is—is happily in the past,” remarked Mrs. Ford sweetly, endeavoring to soften the awkward pause that followed. “As I tell Ebner, we should always be ready to forgive others their—their little mistakes. Oh! I believe strongly in forgiveness, Mr. Crane—’deed I do. I’m just that way, Mr. Crane, and always have been, since I was a girl—my old North Carolinian blood, I suppose—” Her monotonous, high-keyed voice softened as she spoke, and Enoch caught plainly now her Southern accent, touched slightly with the lazy cadence of the negro, as she continued to dilate upon the beauty and virtues of Mrs. Van Cortlandt and the lavish generosity of her husband.
“What’s past is past,” was Ford’s profound remark, when she had finished. “He got his money, anyway. If he’d laid down and give up, somebody else ’ed trampled over him—done the trick, and got it—wouldn’t they? I’ll bet you a thousand dollars even they would have.” (Ford’s bets were never lower than a thousand.) “I guess when you sift the whole thing down, friend, you’ll find Sam Van Cortlandt was up against a pretty big proposition. It was win out or die.”
Enoch lifted a face that quivered with sudden rage, but he did not open his lips.
“Hark!” said Mrs. Ford excitedly, as she caught the sound of a quick, familiar step on the stairs. “That’s Sue now,” and she rushed to open the door. She confided to Sue in an excited whisper as she tripped up to the landing that Mr. Crane was there; saw for herself that her daughter was trim and unruffled, smoothed a wisp of her fair hair in place, and ushered her into the sitting-room, beaming with motherly pride.
There was a refreshing cheerfulness about the young girl as she entered that sent the hard lines out of Enoch’s face before her mother had presented her. As he looked up critically at the girl before him, her charm and refinement were evident to him before she had even opened her pretty lips or stretched forth her shapely gloved hand, which she did with so much unassuming frankness that Enoch held it gratefully. Her cheeks were rosier than usual to-day. Evidently she had thoroughly enjoyed herself at the tea. There was a certain radiance and sparkle in her blue eyes, as she tossed her roll of music on the little Chippendale table and hastily drew off her gloves, that captivated him. He had already banished Van Cortlandt’s failings from his mind. It seemed incredible to him as he watched her, that she was really part of the household in which, for the last quarter of an hour, he had listened to the ill-disguised social aspirations of her mother and the crude, mercenary view-point of her stepfather. The sight of Sue warmed his heart; again his keen eyes kindled, this time with satisfaction.
“Your mother tells me you have been singing at a tea,” said Enoch in a kindly tone, as he released her hand. “I had no idea you were so gifted, my dear,” he continued pleasantly. “And you made a success? I’m sure of it.”
Sue flushed under the compliment.