"He's going to make me a present of something highly valuable, you
know."
"But it looks as though he didn't trust you!"
"He's being very polite about it; but, of course, in his eyes I'm a
common thief, stealing--"
She would not let him go on.
A certain immaturity, the blind confidence of youth in those it
loves, explains Elizabeth's docility at that time. But underneath her
submission that day was a growing uneasiness, fiercely suppressed.
Buried deep, the battle between absolute trust and fear was beginning, a
battle which was so rapidly to mature her.
Nina, shrewd and suspicious, sensed something of nervous strain in her
when she came in, later that day, to borrow a hat.
"Look here, Elizabeth," she began, "I want to talk to you. Are you going
to live in this--this hole all your life?"
"Hole nothing," Elizabeth said, hotly. "Really, Nina, I do think you
might be more careful of what you say."
"Oh, it's a dear old hole," Nina said negligently. "But hole it is,
nevertheless. Why in the world mother don't manage her servants--but no
matter about that now. Elizabeth, there's a lot of talk about you and
Dick Livingstone, and it makes me furious. When I think that you can
have Wallie Sayre by lifting your finger--"
"And that I don't intend to lift my finger," Elizabeth interrupted.
"Then you're a fool. And it is Dick Livingstone!"
"It is, Nina."
Nina's ambitious soul was harrowed.
"That stodgy old house," she said, "and two old people! A general
house-work girl, and you cooking on her Thursdays out! I wish you joy of
it."
"I wonder," Elizabeth said calmly, "whether it ever occurs to you that
I may put love above houses and servants? Or that my life is my own, to
live exactly as I please? Because that is what I intend to do."
Nina rose angrily.
"Thanks," she said. "I wish you joy of it." And went out, slamming the
door behind her.
Then, with only a day or so remaining before Dick's departure, and
Jim's hand already reaching for the shuttle, Elizabeth found herself
the object of certain unmistakable advances from Mrs. Sayre herself, and
that at a rose luncheon at the house on the hill.
The talk about Dick and Elizabeth had been slow in reaching the house
on the hill. When it came, via a little group on the terrace after the
luncheon, Mrs. Sayre was upset and angry and inclined to blame Wallie.
Everything that he wanted had come to him, all his life, and he did not
know how to go after things. He had sat by, and let this shabby-genteel
doctor, years older than the girl, walk away with her.