“She oughtn't to have done that!” Walton growled, as he brushed the shoulders of his coat where her gloved hands had rested and stroked his tingling cheek. “She had no business going as far as that. Women are such dad-dratted galoots when they get wound up in any matter. She seems willing for him to come. I'm not able to understand it, and I don't intend to try. They won't be long getting hitched if she goes at him in a whirlwind like that. Good Lord, I wouldn't have my wife know what she done just now for any man's pile! She'd make a scandal out of it, or break her neck trying.” “Well, it's safe in my hands, Mr. Walton,” Toby said, with unconscious humor. “_I'll_ never tell it.” “_You'll_ never tell it? Who the devil asked you to hide it?” Walton stormed. “But I reckon she meant it to sort o' seal what she'd made up her mind to agree to, and she really is swallowing a pill, Toby, from any point of view. But it will make the boy powerful happy, and he will be on the wing as soon as he gets my report. Huh! I see his old stepdaddy's face now. He may try to keep him; but, shucks! I've got the old duck where the feathers are short. I've started a bang-up report in the boy's favor, Toby, and you can sort o' kick the ball along whenever it comes your way. We needn't mention that nasty business to him, neither; if Margaret can let bygones be bygones, surely the rest of us can.” CHAPTER XXII |UNDER a growing weight of uneasiness, combined with a sense of utter discontent with himself, Galt put Lionel down when he had half listened to his accusing prattle for an hour, and sought the shadowy solitude of his great house. Yes, Margaret Dealing knew, he told himself. That was plain from her change of manner. She knew the truth at last, and was now heaping upon him the silent, womanly contempt which he so eminently deserved. He sat at his open window and watched the shadows fall and sullenly creep across the lawn as the sunbeams receded, and the twilight of a close, sultry evening came on. He went down to supper when he was called, but he ate little and his loneliness seemed more oppressive there in the open gas-light, under the gaze of the observant and solicitous attendants. Taking a cigar, he went outside and began to walk up and down on the grass, now grimly fighting against the fate which, like some grim sea-monster, was clutching him with a million penetrating tentacles, and coiling round him as might some insidious reptile bent upon retributive torture. How had he dared to question the predominance of spirit over matter when this piteous appeal for the peace of his soul was oozing from the very fibre of his being? Presently he saw Wynn Dearing emerge from the front door of his home, carrying a traveller's bag. Dearing rested the bag on the walk at his feet and stood looking down the street. Then, with his arms folded, he began to walk nervously to and fro.