Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/81

Rh to her food, "I knew you would all talk just as you have been talking now, and I did n't want to be bothered with you."

"Guilty conscience," he said curtly. "You knew you were doing wrong. Did you tell your parents?"

"I have n't any. Mother died—and father married again—before I went on the stage. He 's too respectable to own a daughter who 's an actress. Jack was the only person in the world I cared a cent about. I knew him before I came East. He 's been writing to me for years."

"Love letters?"

"Oh, the loveliest!" she cried. "It was his letters that did it. He could never have talked like that."

"He 's a hypocrite," Ruttley said. "No man ever wrote good love letters that was n't. He 'll fool you yet."

She laughed, in a happy scorn of his cynicism. "Save that for a play."

"I will. And I 'll give you the line. Go on. Why have I never seen this paragon?"

He listened, playing a keen eye from her to his plate and back again.

"I would n't have him hanging about the stage door. I told him so. Besides, I was n't in love with him then. I just used to meet him, now and then, somewhere, to cheer him up. I saw you once on the street, but I got him around the corner before you noticed us."

"'The girl who deceives her father will deceive her