"My mistake, Miss Jenny," said Blake, coolly drawing himself up beside her. "I thought it was your house."
He swung about to Mr. Leslie, and said, with unexpected mildness: "Don't worry; I'm going. We don't want to fuss here, do we?—to make it any harder for her. But first, there's one thing. You're her father—I want to say I'm sorry I cut loose this morning."
"What! you apologize?"
"As to what I said about my bridge plans—yes. If you had left out about—If you hadn't rubbed it in so hard about me and—You know what I mean. It made me red-hot. I couldn't help cutting loose. But, just the same, I oughtn't to've said that about the plans, because—well, because, you see, I don't believe it."
"You don't? Then why—?"
"I did believe it before. I believed it this morning, when I was mad. But I've had time to cool off and think it over. Queer thing—all the evidence and probabilities are there, just the same; but somehow I can't believe it of you any longer—simply can't. You're her father."
"H'm—this puts a different face on the matter," admitted Mr. Leslie. "I begin to think that I may have been rather too hasty. Had you been more conciliatory, less—h'm—positive, I'm inclined to believe that we—"
"I don't care what you believe," was Blake's brusque rejoinder. "I'm not trying to curry favor with you. Understand? Come on, Jimmy."
But Genevieve was at his elbow, between him and the door.
"You are not going now, Tom," she said.