To this Louie made no reply, but there came into her eyes a second time the same hard look which had been there once before as she talked of her father. Ordinarily she would have been greatly interested in the party, of which there were never many in Merivale, but she was too anxious to get home and confront her father with what she had heard, to care much for Fred Lansing, or Blanche Percy, or the party to which she probably would not be bidden.
Herbert was now rowing back to the boathouse, and almost before the landing was reached Louie sprang on shore, and, without a word, sped away like a deer in the direction of her home.
Her mother was out, but she found her father in the little room he called his den, where he spent a good deal of his leisure time smoking and reading, and looking over papers and letters, of which he had a great many.
Louie never hesitated when a thing was to be done, and, rushing in upon him, she startled him with the question:
“Father, are you a gambler?”
If she had knocked him down, Mr. Grey could not have been more surprised.
“A gambler!” he repeated, the pen with which he was writing dropping from his hands and his face white as a corpse. “What do you mean? Who has said this of me?”
“It does not matter. I have heard that it was hinted. I said it was a lie, and it is. You are not a gambler. If I thought you were and that the money you give us so freely was obtained that way, I’d—I’d—burn my dresses! I’d smash the furniture! I believe I’d set fire to the house!”
She looked like a little fury, with her flashing eyes and flushed, eager face, and Mr. Grey drew his chair back from her as if afraid she might do him bodily harm.
Two or three times he tried to speak, but the words he wanted to say were difficult to utter and his lips twitched nervously.