“He's going to make me a present of something highly valuable, you know.”
“But it looks as though he didn't trust you!”
“He's being very polite about it; but, of course, in his eyes I'm a common thief, stealing—”
She would not let him go on.
A certain immaturity, the blind confidence of youth in those it loves, explains Elizabeth's docility at that time. But underneath her submission that day was a growing uneasiness, fiercely suppressed. Buried deep, the battle between absolute trust and fear was beginning, a battle which was so rapidly to mature her.
Nina, shrewd and suspicious, sensed something of nervous strain in her when she came in, later that day, to borrow a hat.
“Look here, Elizabeth,” she began, “I want to talk to you. Are you going to live in this—this hole all your life?”
“Hole nothing,” Elizabeth said, hotly. “Really, Nina, I do think you might be more careful of what you say.”
“Oh, it's a dear old hole,” Nina said negligently. “But hole it is, nevertheless. Why in the world mother don't manage her servants—but no matter about that now. Elizabeth, there's a lot of talk about you and Dick Livingstone, and it makes me furious. When I think that you can have Wallie Sayre by lifting your finger—”
“And that I don't intend to lift my finger,” Elizabeth interrupted.