"I believe—sometimes—I almost hate her," said Toni drearily. "She is everything I am not, you see. She is clever, well-educated, amusing. I think I hate women who tell amusing stories," she added vindictively, biting her lip with her strong little teeth.
"But she is not personally objectionable to you?" Herrick wished to hear, if possible, how she treated her employer's wife.
"No—at least she doesn't mean to be," said Toni, striving to speak fairly. "But I know she thinks I am a fool, and pities Owen for having married me. I believe she thinks I ought never to speak to Owen, never ask him any questions about the book. She was quite—short—with me yesterday because I went in to speak to Owen during the afternoon!"
"Oh, but that's absurd!" Herrick felt a quite unreasonable dislike for the superior Miss Loder. "After all you are his wife—she is only his secretary—and husbands and wives have a claim on each other which no sane person would deny."
"Yes." She did not look convinced, and he tried again.
"Don't forget, will you, that a wife holds an absolutely unique position. She is the one person in the world to whom the man is answerable for his actions, just as she is answerable to him for her own; and if she is—hurt—or annoyed by any proceeding on the part of her husband, she has a perfect right to express her wishes on the subject."
"You mean I have a right to ask Owen to send away Miss Loder?" Toni was always direct in her statements. "I suppose I have—if I wanted to—but I don't. It isn't Miss Loder who makes me miserable. It's the whole hopeless situation."
Her words startled him.
"Not hopeless, Mrs. Rose!"
"Why not?" In her eyes he read again that hint of a tortured woman soul which he had glimpsed before. "It isn't very hopeful, is it? My husband wants help and sympathy, which I cannot give him; and yet because he married me he can't ask anyone else for it except in a business way."