“He gets nowhere! That’s because he _isn’t_ a genius! But he’s a widower, so he’s fair quarry. Don’t go to feeling sorry for married men.” “Oh, there’s no sentiment in my sympathy for Mr Varian. Only he intrigues me because of his restless air,—his restrained effect, as if he were using every effort to keep himself from breaking through!” “Breaking through what?” “I don’t know! Through some barrier, some limit that he has fixed for himself—I tell you I don’t _know_ what it’s all about. That’s why I’m interested.” “Curious, you mean.” “Well, curious, then. And how he puts up with that hand-wringing ready-to-cry wife! Yet, he’s fawningly devoted to her! He anticipates her slightest wish,—he is worried sick if she is the least mite incommoded or disturbed,—and I know he’d lie down and let her walk on him if she even looked as if she’d care to!” “What a lot you read into a man’s natural consideration for his wife!” “But it’s there! I’m no fool,—I can read people,—you know that! I tell you that man is under his wife’s thumb for some reason far more potent than his love for her, or her demand for affection from him.” “What _could_ be the explanation?” “I don’t know. That’s why I’m curious. I’m going to find out, though, and that without the Varians in the least suspecting my efforts. Wait till you see her. She’s almost eerie, she’s so emotional. Not noisy or even verbally expressive, but her face is a study in nervous excitement. She seems to grab at the heartstrings of a mere passer-by, and play on them until she tears them out!” “Good gracious, you make her out a vampire!” “I think she is,—not a silly vamp, that the girls joke about,—but the real thing!” CHAPTER II Betty Varian “Dad, you’re absolutely impossible!” “Oh, come now, Betty, not as bad as that! Just because I don’t agree to everything you say——” “But you _never_ agree with me! You seem to be opposed on principle to everything I suggest or want. It’s always been like that! From the time I was born,—how old was I, Dad, when you first saw me?” Mr Varian looked reminiscent. “About an hour old, I think,” he replied; “maybe a little less.” “Well, from that moment until this, you have persistently taken the opposite side in any discussion we have had.” “But if I hadn’t, Betty, there would have been no discussion! And, usually there hasn’t been. You’re a spoiled baby,—you always have been and always will be. Your will is strong and as it has almost never been thwarted or even curbed, you have grown up a headstrong, wilful, perverse young woman, and I’m sure I don’t know what to do with you!” “Get rid of me, Dad,” Betty’s laugh rang out, while her looks quite belied the rather terrible character just ascribed to her.