Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/121

 feld stopped abruptly and more eloquently than by any words he could have said he suggested that which flashed into Marjorie's mind. He seemed to see, by watching her, that he need not say it.

"You mean, Mr. Rinderfeld," she repeated again her address of him, "that Mr. Stanway—caused that?"

Rinderfeld turned and picked up the second goblet from his desk and sipped the water sparingly.

"Causation, my dear young lady," he said, clinging to his abstention from even once repeating her name or her father's, "is always difficult to prove. If you ask me whether I think that Mr. E. H. Stanway's desire to insure his own election to the presidency of the Tri-Lake Products and Material Corporation and the sudden and as yet unexplained recrudescence of interest of Russell in his former wife, whom he deserted and who divorced him, are purely coincidental as to time, I would reply to you that, in my opinion—as yet unsustained by material evidence—they are not."

Marjorie's fingers clenched tightly on the edge of Rinderfeld's desk; she was hot now, tense and eager to fight. She forgot entirely, for the moment, her father's contribution of guilt toward his own undoing. Stanway, his enemy—and hers—had planned the disgrace or, at least, planned to profit by it. For the moment she was stirred against Rinderfeld and almost angry at him for being able himself, when so arousing her, to keep so cool. And Rinderfeld realized this, as he seemed, after a moment's reflection, to realize everything.

"To you, it is, of course, terrible," he said, putting down the goblet carefully on his silver tray. "To me—in what state would I keep myself if I allowed myself