Lize went on: “I thought I’d got rid of her. She’s been away now for about ten years. I don’t know but it was a mistake—look’s like she’s grown a little too fine-haired for us doughies out here.”
“So much the worse for us,” replied Redfield.
This little dialogue gave the girl time to recover herself, but as Cavanagh watched the blush fade from her face, leaving it cold and white, he sympathized with her—pitied her from the bottom of his heart. He perceived that he was a chance spectator of the first scene in a painful domestic drama—one that might easily become a tragedy. He wondered what the forces might be which had brought such a daughter to this sloven, this virago. To see a maid of this delicate bloom thrust into such a place as Lize Wetherford’s “hotel” had the reputation of being roused indignation.
“When did you reach town?” he asked, and into his voice his admiration crept.
“Only last night.”
“You find great changes here?”
“Not so great as in my mother. It’s all——” She stopped abruptly, and he understood.
Lize being drawn back to her cash-register, Redfield turned to say: “My dear young lady, I don’t suppose you remember me, but I knew you when you were a tot of five or six. I knew your father very well.”
“Did you?” Her face lighted up.
“Yes, poor fellow, he went away from here rather under a cloud, you know.”