“Because I’m sorry for you. Because I want you to get out of this hole you’re in, and go and make something of your life.”
Before she knew it, Berny said low, but with a biting incisiveness,
“Oh, you liar!”
Cannon was surprised. He looked for a staring moment at her pale face, stiff over its strained muscles, and said in a tone of cheerful amaze,
“Now, what do you mean by that?”
“Just what I say,” she said. “You’re a liar and you know it. Every word you’ve said to me’s been a lie. Why, Mrs. Ryan’s better than you. She don’t come covering me with oily stories about wanting me to be happy. You think that I don’t know why you’re offering me this money. Well, old man, I do. You want to get my husband for your own daughter, Rose Cannon.”
It was Cannon’s turn to be speechless. He had not for years received so unexpected and violent a blow. He sat in the same attitude, not moving or uttering a sound, and looking at Berny with a pair of eyes that each second grew colder and more steely. Berny, drawn to the edge of her chair, leaned toward him, speaking with the stinging quickness of an angry wasp.
“You thought I didn’t know it. Well, I do. I know the whole thing. I’ve just sat back and watched you two old thieves thinking everything was hidden, like a pair of ostriches. And you being so free with your glad hand and being sorry for me and wanting me to make the most of my life! You said I was a smart woman. Well, I’m evidently a lot smarter than you thought I was.”
“So it seems,” he said. “Smart enough to do some very neat inventing.”
“Inventing!” she cried, “I wish there was some inventing about it. I don’t take any pleasure in thinking that another woman’s trying to buy my husband.”