“How do you know he doesn’t care for her?” The interruption came in a tone of startled surprise and Rose stared at him, her eyes wide with it.
For a moment the old man was at a loss. He would have told any lie rather than have let her guess his knowledge of the situation and the information given him by Dominick. He realized that his zeal had made him imprudently garrulous, and, gazing at her with a slightly stupid expression, said in a slow tone of self-justification,
“Well, that’s my idea. I guessed it. I’ve heard one thing and another here and there and I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no love lost between them. It’s the natural outcome of the situation, anyway.”
“Yes, perhaps,” she murmured. She placed her elbow on the table and pressed the tips of her fingers against her cheek. Her hand and arm, revealed by her loose lace sleeve, looked as if cut out of ivory.
“And then,” went on her father remorselessly, “the results of being a confounded fool don’t stop right there. That’s one of the worst things of allowing yourself the luxury of foolishness. They go on—roll right along like a wheel started on a down-hill grade. Some day that boy’ll meet the right woman—the one he really wants, the one that belongs to him. He’ll be able to stand it all right till then. And then he’ll realize just what he’s done and what he’s up against, and things may happen.”
The smoke wreaths were thick in front of his face, and peering through them he saw the young girl move her fingers from her cheek to her forehead, where she gently rubbed them up and down.
“Isn’t that about the size of it?” he queried, when she did not answer.
“Yes, maybe,” she said in a voice that sounded muffled.
“It’ll be a pretty tough proposition and it’s bound to happen. A decent feller like that is just the man to fall in love. And he’d be good to a woman, he’d make her happy. He’s a good husband lost for some nice girl.”
Rose’s fingers ceased moving across her forehead. Her hand rested there, shading her eyes. For a moment the old man—his vision precipitated into the half-understood wretchedness of Dominick Ryan’s position—forgot her, and he said in a hushed voice of feeling,