Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/337

 He stared at her, for the instant unable to speak. His mind—no, not his mind but something driving his mind was accusing him, and he had first to reply to it. A moment ago, it had let up on him after seizing him there in his room where he had had the newspaper in his hand; there it had cried to him that he had done to his daughter what he had feared and then denied, he had done to her the frightful and irremediable; but here she was in her nightdress before him and it was—almost—as though she were at home in her own room, only alarmed. She was thinner; Billy had told him that; but, expecting that she would be yet thinner, her father found her well and sound; yes, sound! Her eyes? Just the alarm in them; her hair and her clear, soft skin seemed as they always were. So he had not hurt her so much; but Billy—Billy was dead.

"He was killed," Hale said.

"Killed. How?"

"At a road house; at Cragero's."

"Billy at Cragero's?"

"Yes; he—went there."

What had he told her in that tone he could not control? You must have been to blame for his going there; I was to blame back of you; this was in that driver of his tongue.

"When did he go there? When was it, father?"

"Last night."

"What time?"

"Before midnight. It's in the paper this morning, Marjorie."

"Let me see. Let me see!"

"I didn't bring the paper."

The door opened; the girl who had been in the farther bed was at it; how she got there, kimono on over night-