The darky came running up with a pitcher of ice water. No one ever rang for anything else in the Clarendon Hotel. He entered, jingling the ice.
"Show this gentleman out," said Phyllis, "and I want you to remember I shall not be home to him again."
"Phyllis!"
The entreaty in his voice moved her not a bit, nor the outstretched hand, veined, wrinkled and shaking.
"It's conceivable I may forgive you for this, Papa," she exclaimed, "though God knows it will be hard. But if you offer that check to Cyril I shall hate you till the day I die!"
"Have it your own way then," he returned dully, and with a curious break in his voice. "Take your own wilful road, and come back to me when your heart's broken. I'll be waiting for you, Phyllis, and ready to forget and forgive."
She disdained to make any reply. The darky officiously gathered up the silk hat and gloves from the floor, and presented them to Mr. Ladd. The latter, with a last look at his daughter's unrelenting face, turned in silence, and passed out.
"The stairs are to the left, sah," said the darky.
CHAPTER XVIII
Whether disillusion was finally destined to arrive or not, there was certainly not a hint of it during those succeeding weeks. There was no happier little bride in America, than Phyllis Adair, and intimate acquaintance with that extraordinary creature, man, only redoubled her delight in him. The bigness, directness, simplicity, intolerance, and dog-like devotion of her husband were an unfailing joy to her. No little girl who had been given a coveted St. Bernard could have taken more anxious, eager, excited care of him. She would feed Adair with the daintiest morsels from her own plate; she would exert every faculty she possessed to amuse and distract him when he fell into one of his despondent moods; she would mock him with such pretty archness when he grew irritable over trifles. "Damn it all, where did that fool Williams put my patent leather shoes?"--"Damn it all, you will find them in the bottom of the wardrobe neatly ranged with the others," she would answer. No matter how ill his humor she always found the means to make him smile; her quick wit, or her slim, audacious body each exultantly willing to tease and bewitch him.