"All right, if you'd rather. Is there anything you want me to do for supper?"
Supper! What was supper? The details of ordinary life seemed to have faded into nothing.
"I think everything is—ready," Emily murmured, getting up.
Martha came upstairs after a little while.
"Mr. Fairbanks is downstairs, mammie. He wants to see us all. Mammie, don't!" She thought better of protesting against her mother's expression. "Go and wash up; put on something. I'll 'phone dad."
Emily, bestirring herself, heard Martha at the upper 'phone saying to Bob that her mother wanted to see him a minute. She refrained from mentioning Mr. Fairbanks' name. Her voice suggested anything but scandal and tears. She waited in her mother's room, and when Emily would have gone down she urged her to wait till Bob came. Emily was too tired to protest, and went down with Martha only when they heard the car arrive.
She looked at Eve's father with intensified curiosity, since he was the man who seemed to hold Martha's destiny carelessly in his hand. His appearance flatly denied his daughter's account of him. Could a red-faced, hawk-nosed, round-chinned, jovial-looking bald-head be a cursing Lear or a bleeding Goriot? He was extremely well dressed. His rotundity suggested pleasure in steaks and chops. His voice belied his appearance as surprisingly as his daughter had. For when he began to speak—he remained standing, and he kept stroking the back of his shiny head—-Emily immediately thought he must be a man of extraordinary reserve, of powerful self-control. "Martha must respect what he says!" she thought. "He CAN help us."
"This is a very unpleasant affair, Kenworthy," he began, smoothly. "I left Eve crying her eyes out. She wanted to come with me, but I wouldn't have it. I don't know what she's said to you, but it probably wasn't—correct—altogether. You HAVE been good to her, Mrs. Kenworthy. My girls—Eve especially—have got to depend too much on friends like you. I mean—I was worried, I was—uncomfortable because I couldn't arrange—something for her here, in this town—like what you've meant to her, but she's so hard to suit. I can't arrange anything for her—I can't buy or rent her friends. I can't make her like any sensible woman. I can't tell you how relieved I was to have her take to you so—from the first. She says now—she says people will see some—reference to you—to Martha—in this—item in the paper. I don't see that that follows. I don't see why they should. But of course I went to see the editor at once—just in case—you were—upset." He looked closely at Emily. He saw she had been crying. He looked at Martha, more shrewdly, and felt relieved that she showed no sign of concern. "I must say he was decent about it. Very reasonable, I found him. Though young Benton said there was some sort of spite work behind it."
"What's he done about it?" Bob demanded.
"He's denying it in to-morrow's paper. He's saying it was a mistake."