"Miss Maitland, what's wrong? Something is—tell me."
Without answering she shook her head, her lips tightly compressed. He could see that she was shaken, that the clasped hands on her knee were clenched together to control their trembling. He could see that, for a moment, taken unawares, she did not trust herself to speak.
"Look here," he said, low and urgent, "be frank with me. I've seen for some time something was troubling you—I told you so that night at my place. Why not let me lend a hand? That's what I want to do—that's what I'm for."
She had found her voice and it came with a high, light hardness, in curious contrast to the feeling in his:
"You're all wrong, Mr. Ferguson. You're seeing what doesn't exist." She started to her feet, making a grab at her knitting as it slid toward the ground. "Oh, my needle! I almost pulled it out. That would have been a calamity." She carefully pushed the stitches on to the needle as if her whole interest lay in preserving the woven fabric. "There I've picked them up, not lost one." Then she looked at them, smiling, her expression showing a veiled defiance, "You ought to have been a novelist—your imagination's wasted. Here you are seeing me as a distressed damsel, while I'm only a perfectly normal, perfectly common-place person. Romantic fiction would have been your line."
She gave a laugh that brought the blood to the young man's face, for its musical ripple contained a note of derision:
"But for my sake please curb your fancy. Don't suggest to my employers that I'm weighted down by a secret sorrow. They mightn't like a blighted being for a secretary and I might lose my job, and then I really would be worried."
He stood it unflinching, only the dark flush betraying his mortification. He assured her of his reticence and ended by asking her pardon. She granted it, even thanked him for his concern in her behalf and with a smile that was still mocking, said she had notes to write, gathered up her work, and bade him good-by.
Dick Ferguson walked back through the woods to Council Oaks. When the first discomfort of the rebuff had passed he pondered deeply. He was sure now beyond the peradventure of a doubt that Esther Maitland was in trouble of some kind, and was ready to use all the weapons at her command to keep him from finding it out.
Two nights after that he dined at Grasslands. It was just a family party, and, being such, Miss Maitland was present. She met him with the subdued quietness that he was beginning to recognize as her "social secretary manner"—the manner of the lady employee, politely colorless and self-effacing.