“What was the matter?” he asked, solicitously, “Why did you run away from us all? Conover waited a long time, hoping you’d come back. At last I told him you had a sick headache. Then--” “It happened to be true,” she answered brokenly. “Oh, Amzi, I’m so _miserable_! _Why_ did that man come here? I’ve left word I’m never at home to him.” “Be nice to him for my sake, won’t you, darling?” pleaded Caine, “I can’t explain. But I--need him very much just now. I can’t afford, for business reasons, to have him offended.” “But if you only knew--!” she cried; then stopped. “Knew what? Tell me,” he begged, “Is anything troubling you?” The formless fear she sought to voice died on her lips. “No,” she said. “Nothing at all. But I’m very tired. Goodnight.” And with this lachrymose evasion he was forced to content himself. But before going to bed, Letty, as a last hope, sought out her father. “I wish,” she entreated, nerving herself to the effort, “I _wish_ you would forbid Mr. Conover the house. I--I hate him. I’m _afraid_ of him. Oh, Father, _please_ don’t let him come here any more!” Standish looked up from his evening paper with a frown of cold displeasure. “I do wish, Letty,” he said with the dry little cough that nowadays accompanied his every sentence, “that you would learn self control. You are not a baby any longer. These childish prejudices of yours are absurd. Mr. Conover is--very useful to me--and to the bank,--just at present. Out of deference to me, you will please treat him with courtesy whenever he chances to call!” But Letty, weeping uncontrollably, had run from the room. She felt herself helplessly enmeshed in a net whose cords her best-loved were drawing tighter and tighter about her. CHAPTER XVIII CALEB CONOVER GIVES A READING LESSON Conover, during the month that followed, found time from his financial warfare to make three more calls at the Standish house. The soft-hearted Divinity of children and fools was merciful to Letty on those occasions, inasmuch as there were each time other guests on the dusky piazza. The girl thus avoided intimate talk of any long duration with her giant visitor. Yet she noted with helpless dread that at every successive visit the Fighter’s manner told more and more of a subtle understanding between them; of an increasing sense of possession. Wildly, impotently Letty resented this. But she watched its growth with a dazed fascination. By turns she clung to Caine in a mad craving for protection; or repulsed him with pettish impatience as a defense which she instinctively felt would not be strong enough to guard her when her hour of stark need should come. More than once it occurred to Letty to tell Caine all her fears. But, stripped of woman’s formless, illogical intuition, what was there to tell? She had no shadow of actual fact to go on; and men demand facts. So she continued to puzzle her lover by alternate spells of effusive demonstration and chilling sulks.