"Oh, good Lord!" she said shortly. "Bluff the rest of the world like a professional, Eileen, but why try it with me? You're right about my having common sense. I'll admit that I am using it now. I will be of age in a few days, and then we'll take John Gilman and go to the Consolidated Bank, and if it suits your convenience to be absent for four or five days at that period, I'll take John Gilman and we'll go together."Eileen was amazed. The receding color in her cheeks left the rouge on them a ghastly, garish thing.
"Well, I won't do anything of the sort," she said hotly, "and neither will John Gilman.""Unfortunately for you," answered Linda, "John Gilman is my guardian, not yours. He'll be forced to do what the law says he must, and what common decency tells him he must, no matter what his personal feelings are; and I might as well tell you that your absence has done you no good. You'd far better have come home, as you agreed to, and gone over the books and made me a decent allowance, because in your absence John came here to ask me where you were, and I know that he was anxious.""He came here!" cried Eileen.
"Why, yes," said Linda. "Was it anything unusual? Hasn't he been coming here ever since I can remember? Evidently you didn't keep him as well posted this time as you usually do. He came here and asked for me.""And I suppose," said Eileen, an ugly red beginning to rush into her white cheeks, "that you took pains to make things uncomfortable for me.""I am very much afraid," said Linda, "that you are right. You have made things uncomfortable for me ever since I can remember, for I can't remember the time when you were not finding fault with me, putting me in the wrong and getting me criticized and punished if you possibly could. It was a fair understanding that you should be here, and you were not, and I was seeing red about it; and just as John came in I found your note in tile living room and read it aloud.';"Oh, well, there was nothing in that," said Eileen in a relieved tone.
"Nothing in the wording of it, no," said Linda, "but there was everything in the intention back of it. Because you did not live up to your tacit agreement, and because I had been on high tension for two or three days, I lost my temper completely. Ibrought John Gilman up here and showed him the suite of rooms in which you have done for yourself, for four years. I gave him rather a thorough inventory of your dressing table and drawers, and then I opened the closet door and called his attention to the number and the quality of the garments hanging there. The box underneath them I thought was a shoe box, but it didn't prove to be exactly that; and for that I want to tell you, as I have already told John, I am sorry. I wouldn't have done that if Ihad known what I was doing.""Is that all?" inquired Eileen, making a desperate effort at self-control.
"Not quite," said Linda. "When I finished with your room, I took him back and showed him mine in even greater detail than I showed him yours. I thought the contrast would be more enlightening than anything either one of us could say.""And I suppose you realize," said Eileen bitterly, "that you lost me John Gilman when you did it.""I?" said Linda. "I lost you John Gilman when I did it? But Ididn't do it. You did it. You have been busy for four years doing it. If you hadn't done it, it wouldn't have been there for me to show him. I can't see that this is profitable. Certainly it's the most distressing thing that ever has occurred for me.
But I didn't feel that I could let you meet John Gilman tonight without telling you what he knows. If you have any way to square your conscience and cleanse your soul before you meet him, you had better do it, for he's a mighty fine man and if you lose him you will have lost the best chance that is likely ever to come to you."Linda sat studying Eileen. She saw the gallant effort she was making to keep her self-possession, to think with her accustomed rapidity, to strike upon some scheme whereby she could square herself. She rose and started toward the door.
"What you'll say to John I haven't the faintest notion," she said. "I told him very little. I just showed him."Then she went out and closed the door after her. At the foot of the stairs she met Katy admitting Gilman. Without any preliminaries she said: "I repeat, John, that I'm sorry for what happened the other day. I have just come from Eileen. She will be down as soon as Katy tells her you're here, no doubt. I have done what I told you I would. She knows what I showed you so you needn't employ any subterfuges. You can be frank and honest with each other.""I wish to God we could," said John Gilman.
Linda went to her work. She decided that she would gauge what happened by the length of time John stayed. If he remained only a few minutes it would indicate that there had been a rupture.
If he stayed as long as he usually did, the chances were that Eileen's wit had triumphed as usual.
At twelve o'clock Linda laid her pencils in the box, washed the brushes, and went down the back stairs to the ice chest for a glass of milk. The living room was still lighted and Linda thought Eileen's laugh quite as gay as she ever had heard it.
Linda closed her lips very tight and slowly climbed the stairs.
When she entered her room she walked up to the mirror and stared at herself in the glass for a long time, and then of herself she asked this question:
"Well, how do you suppose she did it?"
