Then her smile flashed again—a radiant, dazzling brightness that brought her nearer, like the effect of the sunlight's sudden gleam there at times upon the blue line of the "West Shore" away across the broad, three-mile span of the old Tappan Zee.
"And now"—again her splendid young arms were clasped, wing-like, behind her head; and its golden glory hung like a picture against the dark vine leaves, bossed with the clustered purple flowers—"now," she repeated, settling comfortably, "you must just go on and tell me the rest—I can bear it! What did my"—her big blue eyes twinkled as she smiled—"my father say about me?"
I shifted uncomfortably. "Oh, I can't, you know!" I demurred. "I say, what's the use, dash it?" Poor old boy, somehow I just hated to round on him—he was so jolly hard hit already; Jack, don't you know! Besides—
"Please!" Jove, how she said it!
"Oh, dash it, I'm afraid it will hurt you," I protested uneasily; "and I don't think the judge really—"
"I just don't care that"—a snap from her little fingers and her arm went back—"for anything he ever said about me that was mean! So, please go on—I must go dress for luncheon."
And so I just took a deep breath, a long running leap, and cleared the bar—told her all, you know!
Oddly, this time she didn't laugh—and I knew why: it was her father, and it had cut her to the heart. This was what I had feared. As I proceeded, narrating the interview in the library, she just grew rosier and rosier red, but sat looking at me wide-eyed and unflinching. The pulsation of her bosom quickened a little, but her dear face remained unchanged, save for her little trick of dragging her under-lip through her white teeth.
"And, by Jove, that's all!" I finished with relief as I mopped my face. "But who cares, don't you know, or believes any bit of it? Anyhow, we don't—for we know!"
"Are you sure?" She spoke gravely, yet in her eyes were the dancing star-motes of a laugh. "The extravagance, the gambling, and the—oh, all of it? I must tell you I heard some sad things myself about Francis Billings while I was at Cambridge—"