“No, it’s not!” said Berny fiercely. “It’s too dirty for most people. It’s too dirty for any one but Mrs. Ryan, and you can tell her I said so.”
She rose to her feet, still clenching the blotter in her hand. He rose too, interested, annoyed and disappointed, for he knew with a cynical certainty just about what she was going to say.
“Yes,” she cried, stiff and quivering like a leaf, “go and tell her! Tell her just what I said. I’ll see her in hell before I’ll take a cent of her money, or budge an inch out of this house. She’s a fine one to give herself such airs, and think herself too good to know me and then offer to buy me off like a kept woman. Tell her I’m her son’s wife, and I’ll stay so till she’s good and dead, and Dominick’s got his share of his father’s estate. Tell her I’m here to stay, right here, here in this flat, just round the corner from where she lives, and that I’m Mrs. Ryan as well as she is, and that I’m going to stay so. This is my home, here in San Francisco, where she’s tried to ruin me and freeze me out, and here I stick.”
She glared at him as he stood, one hand on the back of his chair, his eyes thoughtfully fixed on her.
“I wouldn’t be too hasty if I were you,” he said pacifically. “Things done in a hurry are rarely satisfactory. It’s a bad way to do business. You’re apt to let good chances slip by.”
“I’ll lie dead in my coffin before I’ll
take her money” Page [263]
“Don’t be afraid,” she said with grim significance. “I’m not going to let mine slip by. I’ve married Dominick Ryan and I’m going to stay by him.”
He turned to the table and picked up his hat, which was a soft, black felt wide-awake. As he dented it into shape, he said,
“You’re sort of heated up and excited now, and a person’s brain don’t work well in that state. You don’t want to come to any important conclusions when you’re not cool and able to think. Sleep on this thing for one night, anyway. You can call me up on the telephone to-morrow, or probably it would be better to send a line by a messenger.”