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Still, he liked to walk by the Harley house; the temporary nearness of Dorothy did his soul good. Besides, he now and then caught a glimpse of her through the window. Richard was on the Marklin side of the street, and as he was for going by back to Bess and eyes on the Harley house Bess rapped on the pane and beckoned him. Richard lifted his hat and obeyed directly.
She was prisoner to her father's loving apprehensions, he being afraid to have her out of sight. Then came her father's death, and the Marklin household devolved upon Bess's hands when the hands were new and small and weak; and the load served to emphasize Bess in divers ways.
Fopling was in the Marklin library, glaring ferociously at Ajax, who was blinking disdainful yellow eyes at Mr. Fopling by way of retort. Richard explained to Mr. Fopling that through certain deals in stocks he had become possessed of two hundred shares of one of Mr. Harley's pet stocks. Mr. Harley would give anything to regain them. Richard desired to return them to Mr.
Hanway-Harley saw the force of this and yielded, though it cost her curiosity a pang. Dorothy's dearest friend was with them a tall, undulating blonde, who was sometimes like a willow and sometimes like a cat. When Mrs. Hanway-Harley had left the room, and Miss Marklin and Dorothy were alone, the former said firmly: "Dorothy, who sent them?" "Now, how should I know, Bess? You read the card."
Fopling's; he could not decide just how to lay hold on the sibyl of the golden locks. Perceiving him wandering in his wits, Dorothy took him up warmly. "Can't you see Bess is laughing at you?" she cried. "You know her so much better than I," argued Richard, in extenuation of his dullness. "Some day I hope to be so well acquainted with Miss Marklin as to know when she laughs."
Father Marklin, in those intervals when his brougham was not racing from one languid, dyspeptic, dance-tired, dinner-weary, rout-exhausted woman to another at ten dollars a drooping head, looked after Bess in that spirit of argus-eyed solicitude with which a government looks after its crown jewels. Bess was herded, not to say hived, and her childish days were days of captivity.
It was written by a Frenchwoman who probably came from Ottawa. She is in love with Storri, and jealous of Miss Harley, whom she thinks Storri aims to marry. You said nothing about Storri seeing Miss Harley, but he does. Miss Marklin was afraid to tell you and Miss Harley was afraid to write you that feature of the situation, fearing you would pitch in rough. It shows they have sense."
When not waiting upon the invalid Mother Marklin, Bess broke into her father's bookshelves, and read the owlish authors such as Bacon and Dr. Johnson, with side-flights into Montaigne, Voltaire, Amiel, and others of hectic kidney. She discovered, moreover, a sympathy with those women of strong minds who have a quarrel with Providence for that they were not made men.
Not that her father had been so recklessly dense as to try his drugs on her; he knew too much for that. But your doctor's children oft get an unusual bringing up, and the chances in favor of the extraordinary in that behalf are doubled where there is only one child. Mother Marklin had been an invalid from the babyhood of Bess.
This was fiction; she wanted Bess to see Richard, of whom she was privily proud. The Marklins lived across the street from the Harley house. Mother Marklin was an invalid and seldom out of her own room. Father Marklin was dead, and had been these five years.
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