“I don't intend to make you an accessory, daddy.”
But' behind her smile he felt a real hurt. He would have given a great deal to have taken her in his arms and tried to coax out her trouble so he might comfort her. But that essential fineness in him which his worldliness only covered like a veneer told him not to force her confidence. Only, he wandered off rather disconsolately to hunt his pipe and to try to realize that Delight was now a woman grown, and liable to woman's heart-aches.
“What do you think it is?” he asked that night, when after her nightly custom Mrs. Haverford had reached over from the bed beside his and with a single competent gesture had taken away his book and switched off his reading lamp, and he had, with the courage of darkness, voiced a certain uneasiness.
“Who do you think it is, you mean.”
“Very well, only the word is 'whom.'”
Mrs. Haverford ignored this.
“It's that Hayden girl,” she said. “Toots. And Graham Spencer.”
“Do you think that Delight—”
“She always has. For years.”
Which was apparently quite clear to them both.