“Look here!” He went over to her chair, looked at her closely. “What’s the matter?”
He had dropped in to tea at her apartment. She was seated behind the copper samovar, white face emphasized [53] ]against the dark hangings, fingers moving restlessly among the tea things.
“Something’s wrong,” he persisted as she did not answer. “What is it?”
“Oh, a million things,—a million little things that don’t count.”
“Looks to me if it was one big thing that does.” He drew her out of the chair—toward the window. “Come on—’fess up to papa!”
“Well, for one thing—” she bit her lip, woman-wise trying in her own soul to veer away from the big issue by concentrating on a lesser. “My mother’s blackmailing me.”
“Your—what?”
She looked up, met his stare of dismay. “The little old lady you see around here sometimes.”
“I thought she was a maid. Look here—I don’t understand. You—why, Lizzie Parsons, you’ve been an orphan for years!”
“I know I have. But I had to have some one—mother preferred—to protect me.”