“That’s better,” I replied. “But why should you want even his opinion? Your father knows more about Great Midwestern than its president, more than any other one person. Why not get his opinion?”
Until that moment she had perfectly disguised a state of anxiety verging upon hysteria. Suddenly her powers of self-repression failed. My reference to her father caused the strings to snap. Her expression changed as if a mask had fallen. The grief muscles all at once relaxed and the pretty frown they had been holding in the forehead disappeared. Her eyes flamed. Her upper lip retracted on one side, showing the canine tooth. Her giving way to strong emotion in this manner was a kind of pagan revelation. It did not in the least distort her beauty, but made it terrible. This, as I learned in time, was the only one of her effects of which she was altogether unconscious.
“We know his opinion,” she said. “We take it with our food. He is putting everything we have into Great Midwestern stock,—his own money, the family’s money, mother’s, Natalie’s, gram’ma’s and now mine.”
“Without your consent? I don’t understand it,” I said.
“The money in our family is divided. Each of us has a little. Most of it is from mother’s side of the house. My father and gram’ma are trustees of a sum that will come to me from my uncle’s estate when I am twenty-one. It is enough to make me independent for life. They are putting that into this stock! Is it a proper investment for trust funds, I ask you?”
I felt I ought not to be listening. Still, I had not encouraged these intimate disclosures, she was old enough to know what she was doing, and, most of all, the information was dramatically interesting. I was obliged to say that by all the rules Great Midwestern stock would not be considered a proper investment for trust funds.
“I’ve protested,” she said. “I’ve threatened to take steps. Pooh! What can I do? They pay no more attention to me than that! Neither father nor gram’ma. Mother is neutral. Father says it will make me rich. I don’t want to be rich. Besides he has said that before.”
“It may turn out well,” I said.
“It isn’t as if this were the first time,” she continued. “Twice he has had us on the rocks. Twice he has lost all our money, all that he could get his hands on, in the same way, putting it into a railroad that he hoped to get control of or something, and going smash at the end. Once when I was a little girl and again three years ago. To-day on the train I heard two men talking about a receivership for the Great Midwestern as if it were inevitable. What would that mean?”
“It would be very disagreeable,” I said.