itate Owen; for he came a
step forward and spoke rather brusquely.

"Well? You've read it? What have you to say about it?"

"To say? Nothing." She lifted her eyes to his, and let them drop again,
wearily, to the letter on her knee.

"Oh, come, Toni, that's nonsense." Conscious of the irritation in his
tone Owen paused, then spoke more gently. "Miss Loder is not the sort of
person to imagine slights--she has been out in the world too long for
that. But evidently she has clearly seen your antipathetic attitude
towards her, and feels that in the circumstances she cannot remain."

"I have never slighted Miss Loder." Toni, frightened, sounded defiant.

"Not exactly. But you have shown _me_ very plainly that you resented her
presence; and I suppose you have not been very careful to hide
your--well, prejudice--from the girl herself."

"She has no right to say such things," said Toni, a warm flush creeping
up beneath her ivory pallor. "I have never been rude to her, as you seem
to think. I have always hated her, I admit--always, from the first time
I saw her; but----"

"Ah, you acknowledge that." Owen pounced on the admission. "But why,
Toni? Why should you hate the girl?"

"Why? I don't know," said Toni recklessly. "Simply because I do, I
suppose--because if I knew her for a hundred years I should never do
anything but hate her."

"And so, through your senseless jealousy, I'm to lose the best secretary
I've ever had." Owen's tone was cold. "Really, Toni, I think you've gone
a little too far this time. Quite apart from the fact that you must have
behaved in a very childish and unladylike fashion to make the girl so
uncomfortable, you have also done me an injury. If you didn't care for
my work for its own sake--and I know neither the _Bridge_ nor my book
has ever appealed to you--still I think you might have sacrificed your
personal feelings just a little and considered my position in the
matter."

From her lowly seat on the fender, Toni looked up at him with a strange
expression in her eyes. In truth, at that moment Toni's soul was a
battlefield of conflicting emotions. Anger, defiance, resentment at what
she considered her husband's injustice, were mingled with a great dread
of Owen's displeasure; and a wild, miserable despair at the thought of
his conception of her as indifferent to his aims and ideals. At one and
the same moment she longed to hurl defiance into his face, and to cast
herself, weeping, into his arm