“Nettie told me about her. Well, I guess if you feel that way I have got to let you go, and I don’t quite know I’m sorry you have these notions. They’re a kind of warranty, and it wasn’t altogether because you’ve got in you the snap and grit that makes a man who can handle big affairs I made you my partner. Still, time’s getting on, and Nettie is expecting us at Glenwood.”
He summoned two clerks, who attested the agreement, and in another ten minutes they were waiting for the elevator, while late that night Appleby contrived to find Nettie Harding, who had been very gracious to him, alone. She was standing by the marble hearth in the great drawing-room where snapping logs of scented wood diffused a warmth and brightness which would, however, scarcely have kept the frost out but for the big furnace in the basement.
“What happened to-day has your approbation?” he said.
Nettie smiled. “Now, I think that is quite unnecessary when you know it has,” she said.
“Perhaps it is. I can’t help fancying you were not greatly astonished at your father’s decision.”
“Still,” said the girl quietly, “I don’t think I could coax Cyrus P. Harding into making a bad bargain. Besides, if I had a finger in it, is it more than any one would have expected?”
“I don’t quite understand.”
“No?” and Nettie smiled incredulously. “Well, you picked me up one night when I might have gone out over the rail on the ‘Aurania.’”
“I don’t think you could have managed it had you tried.”
Nettie stood silent a moment, and then a little flush crept into her face, as she glanced down at the diamonds on her white wrists, and her long trailing dress. It was, Appleby fancied, of as costly fabric as the looms in Europe could produce.