“Well, darling, let them talk! At least they will talk about both of us then!”
“Who’s talking about me?” Constance demanded.
“Be calm, dearest! You certainly wore the guilty look then. Let’s call it quits—I’ve got to dress!”
She poured herself a second drink and restored the bottle to its hiding place.
CHAPTER SIX
I
Several interviews with Freeman had resulted in an arrangement by which Bruce was to enter the architect’s office immediately. As Henderson had predicted, Mrs. Freeman was a real power in her husband’s affairs. She confided to Bruce privately that, with all his talents, Bill lacked tact in dealing with his clients and he needed someone to supply this deficiency. And the office was a place of confusion, and Bill was prone to forgetfulness. Bruce, Mrs. Freeman thought, could be of material assistance in keeping Bill straight and extricating him from the difficulties into which he constantly stumbled in his absorption in the purely artistic side of his profession. Bruce was put to work on tentative sketches and estimates for a residence for a man who had no very clear idea of what he wanted nor how much he wanted to spend.
Bruce soon discovered that Freeman disliked interviews with contractors and the general routine necessary to keep in touch with the cost of labor and materials. When he was able to visualize and create he was happy, but tedious calculations left him sulky and disinclined to work. Bruce felt no such repugnance; he had a kind of instinct for such things, and was able to carry in his head a great array of facts and figures.
On his first free evening after meeting Millicent Harden at the Country Club he rang the Harden doorbell, and as he waited glanced toward the Mills’ house in the lot adjoining. He vaguely wondered whether Franklin Mills was within its walls.
He had tried to analyze the emotions that had beset him that night when he had taken the hand of the man he believed to be his father. There was something cheap and vulgar in the idea that blood speaks to blood and that possibly Mills had recognized him by some sort of intuition. But Bruce rejected this as preposterous, a concession to the philosophy of ignorant old women muttering scandal before a dying fire. Very likely he had been wrong in fancying that Mills had taken any special note of him. And there was always his mother’s assurance that Mills didn’t know of his existence. Mills probably had the habit of eyeing people closely; he shouldn’t have permitted himself to be troubled by that. He was a man of large affairs, with faculties trained to the quick inspection and appraisment of every stranger he met....