The Breaking Point - Page 105/275

"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.