“She was, for years. But this spring,—” he hesitated.
McQuiston loved a scandal. He leaned across his desk toward Harold.
“This spring your father put this little girl, Miss Wooley, a copyist, utterly inexperienced, in Miss Doane’s place. Miss Doane was indignant and left us. The change made comment here in the office. It was slightly—No, I will be frank with you, Harold, it was very irregular.”
Harold also looked grave. “What could my father have meant by such a request as this to my mother?”
The silver haired senior partner flushed and spoke as if he were trying to break something gently.
“I don’t understand it, my boy. But I think, indeed I prefer to think, that your father was not quite himself all this summer. A man like your father does not, in his right senses, find pleasure in the society of an ignorant, common little girl. He does not make a practise of keeping her at the office after hours, often until eight o’clock, or take her to restaurants and to the theater with him; not, at least, in a slanderous city like New York.”
Harold flinched before McQuiston’s meaning gaze and turned aside in pained silence. He knew, as a dramatist, that there are dark chapters in all men’s lives, and this but too clearly explained why his father had stayed in town all summer instead of joining his family.
McQuiston asked if he should ring for Annie Wooley.
Harold drew himself up. “No. Why should I see her? I prefer not to. But with your permission, Mr. McQuiston, I will take charge of this request to my mother. It could only give her pain, and might awaken doubts in her mind.”
“We hardly know,” murmured the senior partner, “where an investigation would lead us. Technically, of course, I cannot agree with you. But if, as one of the executors of the will, you wish to assume personal responsibility for this bequest, under the circumstances—irregularities beget irregularities.”