“Is it true you’ve been meeting this man Weir on the quiet? Meeting him while engaged to me? You know what I think of him, and what every other respectable person thinks of him.”
“Was that Mr. Burkhardt’s report? That I am 101 meeting Mr. Weir on the quiet, to use your words?” she countered.
Sorenson made an angry gesture at what he considered an evasion.
“Janet, listen. He said he saw you at the edge of town, that you were both bare-headed, standing close together, arms locked. Good heavens, can’t you imagine my feelings on hearing what he had to say! He stopped me on the street and drew me aside to put me on my guard, he said. Burkhardt wouldn’t just make up a yarn like that against you, and he’s a good friend of mine. He didn’t say half what he suggested.”
The girl turned her face towards the house, shut her eyes for an instant. She could picture the rider’s brutal leering face and unspoken insinuations; and her brain also placed in the scene her lover greedily if angrily drinking in the tale. Harkening to it instead of knocking the man down, that was the worst of it. Harkening––and believing.
“I’ll not deign to resent your remark of meeting Mr. Weir ‘on the quiet’,” said she, quietly. “I met him on the road accidentally.”
“Don’t you think I’m entitled to know something about it?” he asked, with an edged tone.
“What is it you desire to know?”
Nearly an oath of wrath escaped his mouth, but he kept his control.
“Janet, you know what kind of a man he is,” he said. “You know what I feel against him, and father, and all our friends, and the town. And the whole town, too, will probably hear of this, with a lot of gossip added that isn’t true.”