She said that with a touch of almost vicious asperity.
He went on, far less daunted by her rudeness than he would have been if she had given way to emotion of any kind: "Anyway I have got to know him as well as I can by reading his books."
"What a way to get to know him!" she exclaimed, contemptuously. She looked him sternly in the face and said: "Be frank, Mr. Speed, and admit that you found my father's books the most infantile trash you ever read in your life!"
"Miss Harrington!" he exclaimed, protesting. She rose, stood over him menacingly, and cried: "You have your chance to be frank, mind!"
He looked at her, tried to frame some polite reply, and found himself saying astonishingly: "Well, to be perfectly candid, that was rather my opinion."
"And mine," she added quietly.
She was calm in an instant. She looked at him almost sympathetically for a moment, and with a sudden gesture of satisfaction sat down in a chair opposite to his. "I'm glad you were frank with me, Mr. Speed," she said. "I can talk to anybody who's frank with me. It's your nature to confide in anybody who gives you the least encouragement, but it's not mine. I'm rather reticent. I remember once you talked to me a lot about your own people. Perhaps you thought it strange of me not to reciprocate."
"No, I never thought of it then."
"You didn't?—Well, I thought perhaps you might have done. Now that you've shown yourself candid I can tell you very briefly the sort of man my father was. He was a very dear old hypocrite, and I was very fond of him. He didn't feel half the things he said in his books, though I think he was honest enough to try to. He found a good thing and he stuck to it. After all, writing books was only his trade, and a man oughtn't to be judged entirely by what he's forced to do in order to make a living."
He stared at her half-incredulously. She was astounding him more than ever. She went on, with a curious smile: "He was fifty-seven years old. When he died he was half-way through his eleventh book. It was to have been called 'How to Live to Three-Score-Years-and-Ten.' All about eating nuts and keeping the bedroom windows open at nights, you know."