Part 7 (1/2)
”Oh!” He couldn't tell whether the exclamation emanated from pleasure or merely surprise. ”You severed your connections there because of this new Carlsbad plan?”
”Partly because of that. But chiefly because a secretarys.h.i.+p to a rich man doesn't get one anywhere.”
”I suppose not.”
Still he couldn't decide whether her interest now was genuine or only courteous. But she would give him no further encouragement than to allow him to call occasionally. And with this permission he went away well content.
Ten minutes after he heard the front door close, Clinton, in a dressing-gown and slippers, appeared on the threshold of his sister's room. ”Gone, at last?” he queried. ”What's Glover doing up here anyway?
I thought he was securely anch.o.r.ed with a millionaire hermit down South.”
She spoke without turning from the dressing-table where she was shaking her long dark hair down over an amethyst-colored negligee. ”You don't like him, do you?”
”No, I can't say that I do.”
”Why not?”
Before the directness of the question he felt suddenly shamefaced, as a man always does who condemns one of his own s.e.x before a woman on insufficient evidence. ”Oh, he's all right, of course. I have no reason really for disliking the fellow, except----Well, he seems to like you too much. And he's not your style. What did he want to-night?”
”He wanted to tell me about a new scheme he has, a really wonderful enterprise, Clint, for turning that mineral water place into a health-resort. He's taken over most of the stock and he talked glowingly about it.”
”He does talk well; I'll admit that. But who is going to capitalize this venture?”
His sister smiled. ”Well, Clinton, I could hardly ask him that, you know.”
”No, I suppose not. And if you had, I imagine that he would hardly have liked to answer it. Anyhow, he's cheered you up, and I ought to be grateful to him for that. It was a mistake for you to take that trip to Mont-Mer, Crete. It was too much for you.”
She made no response to this, and her brother, noting the delicately flushed face and languid movements, told himself reproachfully that the mistake was in going away and leaving her to struggle alone with the hospital venture. He sat down on a cedar chest beside the window.
”Let's retint the whole lower floor, Crete,” he suggested, seizing upon the first change of topic that offered itself. ”Now that this place is to be a home again and not a sanitarium, let's retint and get the public inst.i.tution smell out of it.”
She laid down the ivory brush and turned to him. But her gaze was abstracted, and when she spoke in a musing voice, her words showed that she had not been listening. ”Clinton, have you ever figured out just how much of the Coalinga oil stock belongs to me?”
He had been sitting with one knee hugged between his arms. Now he released it and brought himself upright upon the cedar chest.
”Why, no, I haven't. I don't think it makes much difference, while we're living together, sharing everything this way.”
She got up from the dressing-table and walked over to the far window, drawing the deep lace collar of the amethyst negligee up about her ears as though to screen herself from his view. Out on the bay the lighted ferry-boats plied their silent pa.s.sage, and on the Key Route pier an orange-colored train crawled cautiously, like a brilliant caterpillar, across a thread of track. Marcreta, gazing out into the clear soft dusk, sent a question backward over her shoulder.
”Would it be very much trouble to go over our properties some time and--make a division?”
”No, it wouldn't be much trouble, and I suppose it would be much more businesslike.” He spoke briskly but she knew that her demand had astonished him. ”You know,” he admitted ruefully, ”I don't pretend to be much of a business man. I think you may be right to insist upon an accounting.”
”O Clint! I don't mean that. You know I don't mean that.” Her voice held the stricken tone of the sensitive nature stabbed by the swift realization that it has hurt some one else. ”You've been the best brother a girl ever had. You've been too good to me. I didn't mean _that_ at all.”
”What do you mean then, Crete?”
Her answer seemed to grope its way through an underbrush of tangled emotions. ”I just thought it would be well for us each to know what we have because--you see, we may not always be living together like this.”
CHAPTER IX