"This," said Gertrude with an air of confidence to
Alice, "is extremely distasteful to me."
"And to me," limes said, rather grimly. His gaze was fixed on the deaf woman. "I warned you the last time. I'll make up no more deficiencies. Fll expect all your papers and accounts within the week."
Gertrude stiffened. "I'd prefer to go on with the bank, as usual," she said icily.
"Don't know what you say," rumbled Maud. "Write it down."
Innes gnawed his mustache. "Later," he said with a worried glance at Alice. "Gertrude, you must see it's to protect you."
She lifted her pale chin. "I am no one's burden."
"Innes . . ."
The third sister stood in the archway. She was not as short as Maud nor as thin as Gertrude, but medium tall with a plmnp breast like a pigeon. Her hair was a litde darker than straw and ballooned aroxmd her face like an inverted umbrella, then subsided in a round mound on top of her head. Her complexion was mottled, but she had a kind of meaty color. Her features were sharp, but because they were embedded in a roimd-jowled face, die effect was not sharp. Her eyes, Alice noticed with a shock, were like the eyes in the portrait. One watched and one dreamed.
"Isabel, how are you?" Innes was faintly hostile. "This is Alice Breiman, who's with me. My secretary. Alice, come meet my youngest sister."
Isabel smiled with her lips together. Impulsively, on ac-coimt of the smile, Alice held out her hand. Quick, but not quicker than the veiled dismay in the woman's eyes, Innes ran his arm through Alice's and drew hers down.
"I was saying, Isabel," he said sternly, "that I shall have to do what I threatened to do and take over aU your business matters. I understand you are in a financial mess again.''
He was ready to dominate this sister, also, but she was slippery. Isabel's eyes slid sidewise and down. She didn't answer. Instead she said, "You're always welcome, of course," in a kind of brisk whme; "but I do wish we had known, Innes ..."
"We couldn't very well warn you," Innes defended himself haughtily. "The car went wrong. That wasn't our fault."
"Well, I do hope you won't mind having just what we were about to have ourselves." Her thin smile turned to Alice. "You see, I think dinner is actually ready. And it's so late, you know . . ."
"Please don't trouble about anything," said Alice a lit-de coldly.
"Give us pot luck, Isabel," Innes said, "for heaven's sake."
Isabel's smile remained much the same. "Of course we are very glad to see you both." Her voice had no range. "Perhaps Miss Brennan would care to wash?" Isabel put her left hand, which was small and nervously strong, on Alice's arm. "Is this your bag? I'll call Mr. Johnson."
"Please don't trouble."
The naUs on the hand were very long. The fingers tightened. Alice stood still in the woman's grasp. Her heart began to pound again.
Isabel let her go suddenly and turned away with a quick and somewhat crooked motion of the body.
Innes said, in a low voice, "Isabel's lost her right arm. I ought to have told you."
Then Alice saw the gray kid glove covering stiff artificial fingers on the hand that hung at Isabel's side as she moved crabwise across the hall.
"Yes, you ought to have told me," she said quiedy. "You really ought. Why didn't you, Innes?"
He looked as if he would melt when she raised her reproachful eyes. Alice saw his lower lip push out. With sudden insight, she knew that in a moment he would feel the punishment to be greater than the crime. She looked at this petulant millionaire, the man she was goijig to marry, and she saw her cross of gold.
"Never mind," she said breathlessly. "I only hope I didn't offend her. Oh, Innes"—she made her eyes round—"do you think I have?"
"No, no, of course not," he said fondly. "Of course not, my dear."
It didn't matter much, Alice saw, if Isabel was offended, as long as Inncs needn't feel uncomfortable about it
"Will you take the yoiing lady's bag upstairs, Mr. Johnson?" Isabel whined.
Mr. Johnson was the gross man in the dirty flannel shirt. He followed her into the hall and scooped up Alice's bag as i£ it had been a ping-pong baU. "Sure. Where do you want it?" His inflections were pure American. His teeth, some of them, were gold. His black eyes rested on Alice briefly.
"In the little guest room," Isabel said, in her tone of perpetual worry. "The heat's not on in Papa's room." She put her claw on Alice's arm again. "Mr. Johnson will show you."
Alice wanted to talk and scream like a frightened child. She did not want to go off upstairs with that outlandish creature named, of all incongruous names in the world, Mr. Johnson. Innes saved her.
"Wait a minute, Alice. Come in here, Isabel. For just a minute. I have something to tell you. All three of you. This is news, my dears, really news," Innes was being Santa Claus again, with the same loud, false, hearty good will with which he had entered this house. Gertrude cocked her pale head. Isabel drew within the room with her sidewise step; and Maud, as he tapped her shoulder, turned her shrewd eyes up at him.
"Alice and I are engaged to be married," he said. And then, without sound, he mouthed the words again for the deaf woman.
It seemed to Alice that sound disappeared from the world. The shattering stillness and Innes's mouth working silently seemed to prove that her own ears had failed her. Gertrude, sitting with her head cocked, did not move. Isabel put her left hand out and drew it back. Alice thought she must have cried out, yet because of her own sudden deafness, she had not heard the cry. Not until the fire muttered was she sure it was a real silence that enclosed them.
Maud broke it. "Married?" she croaked. "You and her, eh? Is that so!"
"No, no." Isabel reached with frantic haste for the
paper pad. "Not yet. Engaged." She said it furiously and she wrote it furiously, with her left hand, pressing hard. The smile on her face was a frozen thing.
"How very interesting." The blind woman's voice tinkled coolly. "Well, Innes, you have my best wishes, of
course."
"It's pretty good for an old bachelor like me, isn't it?" Innes said, rocking on his heels. Alice bit her lip.
"Engaged, eh? High time." Maud was accidentally apropos. Her eyes had a light of lewd speculation in them. Alice looked away, anywhere, looked at Isabel.
"Such a surprise," said Isabel, still plaintive. "My dear, we have quite despaired of Innes. Now we shall have to call you Alice. Isn't that nice?"
Her ideas seemed disconnected, as if her mind were elsewhere. But her smile was blooming.
"Brennan," said Gertrude delicately, as if she tasted it. "B,r, e, double n?"
"A,n," finished Alice. It seemed absurd that her first and only remark should be two letters of the alphabet. But they fell from her lips, and nothing else came.
Maud said gratingly, "Innes, you old devil," and slapped her thigh.
"We think we're going to be very happy," said Innes, foolishly loud. "Don't we, darling?"
Alice's shoulders were stiff and unyielding under the curve of his arm. She could not meet that mood. Could not, and no graceful phrase would come.
"Beg your pardon." Fred, the chaufeur, spoke from the hall. He must have come through the back of the house. He touched his forehead to the sisters. "Thought I'd better tell you. I'm going to take her down the hill, sir, and have them put in a couple o' quarts of oil."
"You mean it's running!" cried Innes.
"I think she'll be all right now," Fred said stolidly.
"Good work. That's fine. Fine."
Alice drew out of Innes's arm and found she was trembling.
"Tell your man," said Gertrude, "that Josephine will find him something to eat in the kitchen."
"Thank you, ma'am," Fred said. "I'll be back in a few minutes."
He left the way he had come, not having looked at Alice even once.
Innes took her upstairs in rather a hurry, after that.