He often attempted to talk with Alice of her husband. "Does he persecute you in any way?" demanded Kimberly, trying vainly to get to details.
Alice's answer was always the same. "Not now."
"But he used to?" Kimberly would persist.
"Don't ask me about that."
"If he ever should lay a hand on you, Alice----"
"Pray, pray," she cried, "don't look like that. And don't get excited; he is not going to lay a hand on me."
They did not reach Cedar Lodge until sundown and when they drove up to the house MacBirney, out from town, was seated on the big porch alone. They called a greeting to him as they slowed up and he answered in kind. Kimberly, without any embarrassment, got out to assist Alice from the car. The courtesy of his manner toward her seemed emphasized in MacBirney's presence.
On this night, it was, perhaps, the picture of Kimberly standing at the door of his own car giving his hand to MacBirney's wife to alight, that angered the husband more than anything that had gone before. Kimberly's consideration for Alice was so pronounced as completely to ignore MacBirney himself.
The small talk between the two when Alice alighted, the laughing exchanges, the amiable familiarity, all seemed to leave no place in the situation for MacBirney, and were undoubtedly meant so to be understood. Kimberly good-humoredly proffered his attentions to that end and Alice could now accept them with the utmost composure.
Fritzie had already come over to Cedar Lodge from Imogene's for dinner and Kimberly returned afterward from The Towers, talking till late in the evening with MacBirney on business affairs. He then drove Fritzie back to The Cliffs.