It was close to nine when she sent him a note, not daring to delay a minute longer. For the reports of her men were all to the same effect, that the crisis would not now be long postponed. Bannister, or Holloway, as he chose to call himself, was at the bar with his lieutenants in evil when the note reached him. He read it with a satisfaction he could not conceal. So! He had brought her already to her knees. Before he was through with her she should grovel in the dust before him.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Do nothing till I return,” he ordered, and went jingling away to the Elk House.
The young woman’s anxiety was pitiable, but she repressed it sternly when she went to meet the man she feared; and never had it been more in evidence than in this hour of her greatest torture. Blithely she came forward to meet him, eye challenging eye gayly. No hint of her anguish escaped into her manner. He read there only coquetry, the eternal sex conflict, the winsome defiance of a woman hitherto the virgin mistress of all assaults upon her heart’s citadel. It was the last thing he had expected to see, but it was infinitely more piquant, more intoxicating, than desperation. She seemed to give the lie to his impression of her love for his cousin; and that, too, delighted his pride.
“You will sit down?”
Carelessly, almost indolently, she put the question, her raised eyebrows indicating a chair with perfunctory hospitality. He had not meant to sit, had expected only to gloat a few minutes over her despair; but this situation called for more deliberation. He had yet to establish the mastery his vanity demanded. Therefore he took a chair.
“This is ce’tainly an unexpected honor. Did y’u send for me to explain some more about that sufficient understanding between us?” he sneered.
It was a great relief to her to see that, though he had been drinking, as she had heard, he was entirely master of himself. Her efforts might still be directed to Philip sober.
“I sent for you to congratulate you,” she answered, with a smile. “You are a bigger man than I thought. You have done what you said you would do, and I presume you can very shortly go out of mourning.”
He radiated vanity, seemed to visibly expand “Do y’u go in when I go out?” he asked brutally.
She laughed lightly. “Hardly. But it does seem as if I’m unlucky in my foremen. They all seem to have engagements across the divide.”