He turned and started out.
“Oh, very well,” he said sharply. “But you might take a word of warning, anyhow. That cousin of yours has got an eye on you, all right. And we don't want any scandal about the place.”
“We? Who are 'we'?”
“Me and Mr. Clayton Spencer,” said Joey, smartly, and went out, banging the door cheerfully.
Anna climbed the hill that night wearily, but with a sense of relief that Rudolph had not been waiting for her at the yard gate. She was in no mood to thrust and parry with him. She wondered, rather dully, what mischief Rudolph was up to. He was gaining a tremendous ascendency over her father, she knew. Herman was spending more and more of his evenings away from home, creaking up the stairs late at night, shoes in hand, to undress in the cold darkness across the hall.
“Out?” she asked Katie, sitting by the fire with the evening paper. Conversation in the cottage was almost always laconic.
“Ate early,” Katie returned. “Rudolph was here, too. I'm going to quit if I've got to cook for that sneak any longer. You'd think he had a meal ticket here. Your supper's on the stove.”
“I'm not hungry.” She ate her supper, however, and undressed by the fire. Then she went up-stairs and sat by her window in the gathering night. She was suffering acutely. Graham was tired of her. He wanted to get rid of her. Probably he had a girl somewhere else, a lady. Her idea of the life of such a girl had been gathered from novels.
“The sort that has her breakfast in bed,” she muttered, “and has her clothes put on her by somebody. Her underclothes, too!”
The immodesty of the idea made her face burn with anger.