She offered no defense of young Belden, and this unconcern puzzled him. He had expected indignant protest, but she merely replied: “I don’t care who owns it. It should be rooted out. I hate that kind of thing. It’s just another way of robbing those poor tie-jacks.”
“Clifford should get out of it. Can’t you persuade him to do so?”
“I don’t think I can.”
“His relationship to you—”
“He is not related to me.”
Her tone amazed him. “You know what I mean.”
“Of course I do, but you’re mistaken. We’re not related that way any longer.”
This silenced him for a few moments, then he said: “I’m rather glad of that. He isn’t anything like the man you thought he was—I couldn’t say these things before—but he is as greedy as Alec, only not so open about it.”
All this comment, which moved the forester so deeply to utter, seemed not to interest Berea. She sat staring at the fire with the calm brow of an Indian. Clifford Belden had passed out of her life as completely as he had vanished out of the landscape. She felt an immense relief at being rid of him, and resented his being brought back even as a subject of conversation.
Wayland, listening, fancied he understood her desire, and said nothing that might arouse Nash’s curiosity.