"He loved me as his handmaid who kept him comfortable. If ever I tried to be affectionate with him, he would act like a hyena!"
"If he was human, he loved you!"
"He wasn't human, that was it. He had all run to intellect and hadn't a vulnerable spot left."
"Did you love him?"
"I wanted to, but he wouldn't have it. When he died, I did miss him keenly, he had grown to be a habit with me; a stimulant, too. No one could live with Uncle Osmond and not keep very much alive. So of course my life seemed suddenly very empty without him: he had been my chief care and thought for so many years. I suppose I shall never quite get over missing him. But I can't say I ever really grieved for him."
When about a half-hour later, at the end of an exhilarating and satisfying time together which put a new seal upon their friendship, the two young women parted to go to their homes, Catherine considered, as she walked slowly, to give herself time to think, how strange it was that she, as Mr. Daniel Leitzel's confidential secretary, knew so very much more about him and his affairs than did his own wife.
"She actually does not know that she has married a multi-millionaire. And I don't believe it would impress her greatly to discover that she had. She is unique! For a woman like Margaret to find herself tied up with those Leitzels, oh!" Catherine laughed to herself at what seemed to her the extreme absurdity of the combination. "But it is so tragic, too! Why on earth did she marry him if not for his money? Will she, I wonder, ever reach the point of telling me why she did? No," she shook her head conclusively, "not so long as she continues to live with him will any one ever hear one disloyal syllable from her, I'm sure. If she ever came to the point of rectifying by divorce the blunder she made in marrying him, for whatever mysterious reason, then perhaps she'll explain herself to me."
Catherine wondered how long it would take Margaret to find out that she was married to one of the richest men in the state.
"If I ever see her inconvenienced by lack of funds, I'll enlighten her with some facts and figures known only to her husband and myself," she resolved. "Even I don't know all he has, though I do know what the public doesn't dream of."
She was aware that her employer had, before ever trusting her with any knowledge of his financial affairs, tested and proved her to be a very safe repository of his secrets.