“That’s fine, Dada,” she said, reaching for a fresh cigarette. “Arthur can take me to some of the new dancing places. Arthur’s a good little hopper.”
She felt moved to try to gloss over her blunder in pretending to have an engagement that evening with Helen Torrence, but her intuitions warned her that the time was not fortunate for the practice of her familiar cajoleries upon her father. She realized that she had outgrown her knack of laughing herself out of her troubles; and she had never before been trapped so neatly. Like Shepherd, she felt that in dealing with her father she never knew what was in his mind until he laid his cards on the table—laid them down with the serenity of one who knows thoroughly the value of his hand.
She was deeply in love with Thomas and craved sympathy and help; but she felt quite as Shepherd always did, her father’s remoteness and the closing of the common avenues of communication between human beings. He had always indulged her, shown kindness even when he scolded and protested against her conduct; but she felt that his heart was as inaccessible as a safety box behind massive steel doors. On the drive to Deer Trail she took little part in the talk, to which Shepherd and Constance tried, with indifferent success, to impart a light and cheery tone. When they reached the country house, which derived a fresh picturesqueness from the snowy fields about it, Mills left them, driving on to the stables for a look at his horses.
“Well, that was some break!” exclaimed Constance the moment they were within doors. “Everybody in town knows Helen is away. You ought to have known it yourself! I never knew you to do anything so clumsy as that!”
“Oh, shoot! I didn’t want to come out here today. It’s a bore; nobody here and nothing to do. And I object to being punished like a child!”
“You needn’t have lied to your father; that was inexcusable,” said Constance. “If you’ve got to do such a thing, please don’t do it when I’m around!”
“See here, sis,” began Shepherd with a prolonged sibilant stutter, “let’s be frank about this! You know this thing of meeting Fred Thomas at other people’s houses is no good. You’ve got to stop it! Father would be terribly cut up if he found you out. You may be sure he suspects something now, after that foolish break about going to Helen Torrence’s.”
“Well, I haven’t said I was going to meet anyone, have I?” Leila demanded defiantly.
“You don’t have to. There are other people just as clever as you are,” Constance retorted, jerking off her gloves.
“I can’t imagine what you see in Thomas,” Shepherd persisted.