Weatherstone was not alarmed at all. "If she _should_ fail--which
I don't for a moment expect--it wont ruin me," she told Isabel. "And if
she succeeds, as I firmly believe she will, why, I'd be willing to risk
almost anything to prove Mrs. Thaddler in the wrong."
Mrs. Thaddler was making herself rather disagreeable. She used what
power she had to cry down the undertaking, and was so actively
malevolent that her husband was moved to covert opposition. He never
argued with his wife--she was easily ahead of him in that art, and, if
it came to recriminations, had certain controvertible charges to make
against him, which mode him angrily silent. He was convinced in a dim
way that her ruthless domineering spirit, and the sheer malice she often
showed, were more evil things than his own bad habits; and that even in
their domestic relation her behavior really caused him more pain and
discomfort than he caused her; but he could not convince her of it,
naturally.
"That Diantha Bell is a fine girl," he said to himself. "A damn fine
girl, and as straight as a string!"
There had crept out, through the quenchless leak of servants talk, a
varicolored version of the incident of Mathew and the transom; and the
town had grown so warm for that young gentleman that he had gone to
Alaska suddenly, to cool off, as it were. His Grandmother, finding Mrs.
Thaddler invincible with this new weapon, and what she had so long
regarded as her home now visibly Mrs.
Pages:
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165