“She’s wrong,” cried Anthony. “She belongs to me. I’m the person to make her happy. He’s not.”
“She loves Jim,” said Marjorie under her breath, and dismissing Horatia for a while, she turned to help her brother. There was only a little that she could do but she left him quieter, prouder of himself and his emotion, tortured by the memory of sweetness rather than by bitterness. He was in good hands.
CHAPTER XXIV
MAUD was very angry. She was not in good form after her late hours at the dance and added to her physical malaise came this crashing disappointment. It had been actually inconceivable to Maud that Horatia would ultimately refuse Anthony. Didn’t he offer everything in the world that Maud held valuable? Before her protests, her storms, her really bitter accusations that Horatia had been cruel and selfish, Horatia was silent, stubbornly silent, Maud said. But it was not stubborn silence. It was sympathy with what Maud wanted and regret for the fact that she could not help her get the things she wanted. Maud had given Horatia a happy summer or she had been at least the occasion of offering her one and Horatia was filled with real gratitude. Maud did not want her to leave. She was full of secret enterprising plans for seeing Marjorie or even Anthony himself and insisting that they press Horatia—Maud stopped at no delicacies when the end was really important. But on that point Horatia was fixed. She would not see Anthony again and she would never allow the question to be reopened. And she was leaving at once.
She left Maud with a wet towel around her head, wailing that her summer had been spoiled. There had been several times during their talk when Horatia had nearly added insult to injury by laughing at her sister. This was one of them. She had such a clear picture of Maud, reviving after her departure, and planning the best way to utilize Horatia’s romance.
“Come, Maud,” she said, “think of all the friends you’ve made.”
“I’d like to know how I can keep friends in the face of all the scandal this will make! People will say—and you did encourage him! Just as I was planning to see a lot of these people this winter. They’ll all wonder——”
“It will make you interesting, Maud.” Horatia did smile a little as she said that.
“Oh, you can laugh!” Maud’s tone was pettish but already there was a touch of secret solace in it.
Horatia left her on that note and took the jitney bus to the station. It was a rickety Ford that rattled and creaked over the hills which she was used to crossing with Anthony or Harvey. But Harvey was in town and there was only the jitney this morning, symbol, thought Horatia, of what the world offered to a woman who had no man to provide for her comfort. The back of the seat hit her spine uncomfortably and she held on to the side, grimly taking pleasure in her own discomfort. Once she saw a roadster coming in a whirl of dust, but it was not Anthony.