Richard was quietly looking down. Now he made several parallel lines with a pencil before he looked up.
"No. I don't see that!"
"Mary--Mrs. Putnam, for instance, who is very fond of me, and Mrs. Jay. They want to ask me to dinner--to Christmas parties--and they're not quite comfortable about it. I am not a member of your family even though you are kind enough to treat me as one. I am a paid employee, and Madame Carter naturally resents their treating me as anything else. But most of all," said Harriet, seeing that she was not making headway, "it's myself. Nina, and your mother, and Mrs. Tabor--it's just a hint here and there--nothing at all! But it undermines my position--even with Bottomley. I dress, I entertain your friends, I join you in town; it makes talk. And I can't--I can't--"
She stood up, and turned her back on him proudly, and he knew that she was crying.
"Just a minute," Richard said, finding himself more shaken than he would have believed. "It is--you're sure it isn't Blondin?"
"Royal Blondin!" There was in her tone a pleasant, childish scorn and indignation that again he thought amusing. She sat down facing him again, and quite openly dried her eyes, and smiled. "No, it's more serious," Harriet said. "It means constant irritation for your mother. It means that she is always in a state of exasperation. I think--I don't know, but I have reason to think--that she made it a choice, for Mary Putnam, between us!"
"She has no right to do that," said Richard, soberly.
"I'm not--you know that!--criticizing," Harriet said. The man sighed, and tossed a few papers on his desk.
"Sometimes I have hoped," he began, on a fresh tack, "that you and the boy might fancy each other. I'm not satisfied with Ward. He needs an anchor. That would be a solution for us all!" It was a random shot, but to his surprise she flushed brightly.
"Ward knows that there is no chance of that," she said, quickly, "dearly as I love him!"