"For heaven's sake, mother," I snapped, "let poor Henry alone. Henry is the most useful person I know."
"You can't play with red-headed people and not get burned," mother said with unconscious humour. "He's very fond of you, Kit. I watched him to-night."
"The fonder the better," I said flippantly. Yes, that's what I said. When I look back on that evening and think how little Henry entered into my plans, and the rest of it, it makes me cold.
"I want you to do one thing—just one, mother: I want you to be very cool to Russell Hill."
"Cool!"
"And I want you to forbid me to see him."
"I'm not insane, Katherine."
"Listen, mother," I said desperately. "All his life Russell Hill has had everything he wanted. He's had so much that—that he's got a sort of social indigestion. The only things he wants now are the things he can't have. So he can't have me."
Mother's not very subtle. And she was alarmed. I can still see her trying to readjust her ideas, and getting tied up in them, and coming a mental cropper, so to speak.
"If he can't have me he'll want me."