"He has one of the keenest legal minds I've ever met," declared Walter, "though of course——" He looked at Margaret uncertainly. "Well, Margaret, after your eight years with a highbrow like your Uncle Osmond, most other men must seem, by contrast, rather stupid to you. Even I," he smiled whimsically, "must feel abashed before such a standard as you've acquired. But really, one can't despise a man who has reached the place in his profession that Leitzel has attained, even if he is a bit—eh, peculiar."
It never occurred to Walter to recommend Leitzel by mentioning that he was a millionaire, the man's prominence in his profession being, in Eastman's eyes, the measure of his value.
"It's going to be rather rough on your husband, Margaret," Walter teased her, "to have to play up to the intellectual taste of a wife that's lived with Osmond Berkeley."
"But, Walter, other things may appeal to me: kindness and affection, for instance. My life, you know," she said gravely, "has been pretty devoid of that."
There was a moment's rather awkward silence at the table, which Margaret herself quickly broke. "This Mr. Leitzel—there's something positively uncanny in the way he seems to see straight through you to your back hooks and eyes; and I'm quite sure if there was a small safety pin anywhere about me last night where a hook and eye should have been, he knew it and disapproved of it. I'm certain that details like safety pins interest him; he has that sort of mind, if he is a great lawyer."
"Not great," Walter corrected her. "I didn't say great. He's able and skillful; but, I must admit, very limited in his scope, his field being merely the legal technicalities involved in the management of a corporation. However, he's a nice enough little fellow. Didn't you find him so?"
"I'm afraid I found him rather absurd and tiresome."
"Take care, Margaret!" Harriet playfully warned her, "or else—oh! won't you have to be explaining away and apologizing for the things you are saying about that man. He's smitten with you!"
Margaret's eyes rested upon Harriet for a moment, while her quick intuition recognized just why her joking remarks about Mr. Leitzel had met with no response in kind: her sister was actually seeing in this queer little man a possible means of getting rid of her, and Walter was abetting her!
She turned at once to the latter, swallowing the lump that had risen in her throat. "Have you done anything, Walter, about securing me a loan on our property?"