Pat searched her mind for movie evidence. "Hasn't he got a key?"
"No. Why not be honest and ask directly what's in your mind?"
"I—I don't know how," confessed the visitor.
"For a singularly forward young person you don't get on very fast. How old are you?"
"Nineteen. But I know everything about—about everything."
"If you don't it isn't for lack of enterprise," was the grim reply. "And what you don't know, you suspect. In this case your suspicions are quite correct. But it doesn't follow that Ralph—that your father comes and goes at will here, in my place." There was the slightest emphasis on the possessive.
"Oh! I thought they—they always had—had a key, and—and——"
"And paid the rent, and filled the place with luxury and orchids, cigarettes and champagne. You've been reading cheap novels. The rotten-minded little fiction writers don't know everything. They don't know anything about women."
Pat leaned forward. "Are you going to marry Dad?"