Page:Dangerous Business (1927).pdf/170

 "You love this house; you'd be back here, but for me."

"No," denied Jay, stupid in his excitement, not thinking. "I'd be at Harvard."

She went whiter. "Yes; I've smashed you up! You'd take everything your father said and what he'd think of you, wouldn't you? That's you! You'd take it all with me without a word for yourself! . . . Well, you won't!"

He tried to grasp her but she slipped to the door and was out, running down the stairs. The strong smoke of his father's cigar floated from the drawing-room; and she reached sanctuary there. Jay followed and joined her where his father had waited, prepared to deal with them.

"Sit down," John ordered; and Lida instantly obeyed him.

Jay apprehensively remained standing, near her.

"You have become my daughter," John delivered at her.

"Then Jay's mother's son, too," retorted Lida quickly.

"What?" asked John, halted.

Lida repeated and in the same breath explained it: "If you're entitled to me living by your family ideas, she's entitled to him by ours."

It was solely to discomfort his father, Jay realized. Lida's wits were spinning far faster than his. This had flashed to her and she had flung it out to confuse him; but it was nothing to her.

She was on edge for another opening; of what sort, Jay could not anticipate, for she flashed one irrelevance after another, while his father arraigned him and her.

His father told how, long ago, he had found Jay failing in duty and responsibility; how he had battled with Jay's