"Yes, you do; you go." He was always keen for her pleasure, but in the present case he seemed especially earnest.
"Want to get rid of me, huh?"
"No; you know I'll half die without you. But I am going to be fearfully busy from now on,"—his mouth seemed hot and dry as he talked,—"it will suit better now than ever. You go."
"Well, maybe," she said. She was accustomed to let her own fancy settle such questions for her. "Maybe I'll go. Maybe I shan't." There was a click at the front gate. "I expect that's Mr. Steering," she announced.
Madeira got out of his chair quickly. "If it is, I don't want to see him," he said, "he—oh, he irritates me, that man,—always wanting to dictate. I'll go in. Don't want ever to see him again,—and say, Pet?"
"Well, Dad?"
"I'd be glad if you would never see him again. Just stop where you are, will you?"
She drew a long sighing breath. "Just stop where I am? Well, I'll see," she said, laughing and flushing in the warm, rich fashion of her skin, but there was the faint far call of uneasiness in her laughter, like a wind-whisper of coming rain. "Tell Samson to bring Mr. Steering out here to me," she commanded, and Madeira went off toward the house and disappeared through the green-latticed porch.
Inside the house he retired to the room that was known as his office, locked the door and came over to his desk. As he did it a peculiar consciousness of himself suffused him like the first fumes of a deadly narcotic. He began to see that he was lifting his feet stealthily, advancing them stealthily, stealthily setting them down, with the soundless fall of a cat's foot on velvet. Reaching his desk, he half fell into a chair there, a thin line of white froth between his lips, his big face purplish. "Eh, God?" he cried, "what's this? what's this?"
The seizure passed as suddenly as it had come. By and by he heard Steering pass through the house under Samson's escort. When the sound of Steering's foot-steps had died away, Madeira took a letter from his pocket, spread it open before him and read it over and over.