Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/208

Rh never be made to understand this, and always felt herself deserted and betrayed when any side but her own was given a hearing.

“I’m sorry if all I have tried to do at Westmore is useless—but I suppose I shall never understand business,” she murmured, vainly seeking consolation in her father’s eye.

“This is not business,” Amherst broke in. “It’s the question of your personal relation to the people there—the last thing that business considers.”

Mr. Langhope uttered an impatient exclamation. “I wish to heaven the owner of the mills had made it clear just what that relation was to be!”

“I think he did, sir,” Amherst answered steadily, “in leaving his wife the unrestricted control of the property.”

He had reddened under Mr. Langhope’s thrust, but his voice betrayed no irritation, and Bessy rewarded him with an unexpected beam of sympathy: she was always up in arms at the least sign of his being treated as an intruder.

“I am sure, papa,”she said, a little tremulously, “that poor Richard, though he knew I was not clever, felt he could trust me to take the best advice”

“Ah, that’s all we ask of you, my child!” her father sighed, while Mr. Tredegar drily interposed: “We are merely losing time by this digression. Let me suggest [ 192 ]