“I should like to know why I cannot be Agatha,” she asked, with that keen feminine scent for a personality which leads to the uttering of so much nonsense, and the brewing of so much mischief.
“I never thought--” he began.
“Yes?”
He laughed and refused to go any farther, although she certainly made the way easy for him.
“In fact,” she said mockingly, “you are disappointed. You never expected me to turn out such a horrid--”
“You know it isn’t that,” he interrupted, with a flash of his gloomy eyes.
“Not now,” she said quietly, glancing towards the door. “I hear Mrs. Harrington coming downstairs. You can tell me afterwards.”
Luke turned on his heel and greeted Mrs. Harrington with quite a pleasant smile, which did not belong to her by rights, but to the girl behind him.
Fitz had been away for two years. Mrs. Harrington in making overtures of peace to Luke had been prompted by the one consistent motive of her life, self-gratification. She was tired of the obsequious society of persons like the Ingham-Bakers, whom she mentally set down as parasites. There is a weariness of the flesh that comes to rich women uncontrolled. They weary of their own power. Tyranny palls. Mrs. Harrington was longing to be thwarted by some one stronger than herself. The FitzHenrys even in their boyhood had, by their sturdy independence, their simple, seamanlike self-assertion, touched some chord in this lone woman’s heart which would not vibrate to cringing fingers.
She had sent for Luke because Fitz was away. She wanted to be thwarted. She would have liked to be bullied. And also there was that subtle longing for the voice, the free gesture, the hearty manliness of one whose home is on the sea.