It was difficult for him to realize that she was twenty-two and quite old enough to be held accountable for her sins. Her appeal to tears had always found him weak, but her declaration that she had suspected a trap when he began to quiz her was a trifle too daring to pass unchallenged. He repeated his demand that she sit up and stop crying.
“We may as well go through with this, Nan. I want to know what kind of an arrangement you have with Copeland. Are you in love with that fellow?”
“No!”
“Have you promised to marry him?”
“No!”
“Then why are you goin’ places where you expect to see him?”
“I’ve explained that, papa,” she replied with more assurance, finding that he did not debate her answers. “I didn’t like to refuse Mrs. Kinney when I’d been refusing so many of her invitations. She asked me a while ago to come to her house to spend a week; and a little before that she wanted me to go on a trip with them, but you were sick and I knew you didn’t like her, anyhow, so I refused. You’ve got the wrong idea about her, papa,” she continued ingratiatingly. “She’s really very nice. The fact that she hasn’t been here long is against her with some of the older women, but that’s just snobbishness. I always thought you hated the snobbishness of some of these people who have lived here always and are snippy to anybody else.”
He was conscious that she was eluding him, and he gripped his hands with a sudden resolution not to be thwarted.
“I don’t care a damn about the Kinneys; I’m talkin’ about you and Copeland,” he rasped impatiently.
“Very well, papa; I’ve told you all there is to know about that—”