“Yes, Rose has troubles. Of course she has, but what have they got to do with you, who don’t care about a thing but your damned ranch?”
“What’s the matter with her?” said Gene, roused into active uneasiness and quite oblivious to his father’s insults. “I didn’t know anything was wrong. She didn’t tell me.”
“No, and she won’t,” said the father. “And let me tell you if I catch you asking her any questions or giving her any hints that I’ve said anything to you, you can stay on your ranch and never come back into this house. I won’t have Rose worried and upset by every fool that comes along.”
“Well, but how am I to find out what’s the matter with her,” said the altogether baffled brother, “if you won’t tell me, and I’m not to ask her?”
“You needn’t find out. It’s her affair—hers and mine. Don’t you go poking your nose in and trying to find out. I don’t want you butting into Rose’s affairs.”
“Just now,” said Gene in an aggrieved tone, “you said I didn’t take any interest in anything but my ranch. Now, when I want to take an interest in Rose, you tell me not to butt in. I love my sister more than most men, and I’d like to know if anything’s wrong with her.”
“She’s got a cold,” said Cannon.
He spoke sharply and looked at Gene with a sidelong eye full of observant malice. The young man gazed back at him, confused, for a moment half inclined to laugh, thinking his father, in a sudden unaccustomed playfulness, was joking with him.
“Well, if it’s only a cold,” he stammered, “it’s nothing to tear up the ground about. I thought it was something serious, that Rose was unhappy about something. But a cold——”
He was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Rose herself, her hand drawing back the portière that veiled the doorway. She, who knew her father so well, had decided that in his present mood it was better to curtail his after-dinner chat with Gene. Her quick eye took in their two faces, and she felt that her brother had probably had a trying half-hour.