"You told me that Henry Holbrook found his way here ahead of you. How do you account for that?"
He looked at me quickly, and rose, again pacing the narrow room.
"It's about the last place in the world to attract him. Port Annandale is a quiet resort frequented by western people only. There's neither hunting nor fishing worth mentioning; and a man doesn't come from New York to Indiana to sail a boat on a thimbleful of water like this lake."
"If Helen Holbrook gave him warning that they were coming here--"
He wheeled on me fiercely, and laid his hand roughly on my shoulder.
"Don't you dare say it! She couldn't have done it! She wouldn't have done it! I tell you I know, independently of her, that he was here before Father Stoddard ever suggested this place to Miss Pat."
"And you needn't insinuate that she is not acting honorably in this affair! I should think that after making love to her, as you have been doing, and playing the role of comforter to Miss Pat, you would have the decency not to accuse her of connivance with Henry Holbrook."
"You let your jealousy get the better of your good sense. I have not been making love to Miss Holbrook!" I declared angrily and knew in my heart that I lied.
"Well, Irishman," he exclaimed with entire good humor; "let us not bring up mine host to find us locked in mortal combat."
"What the devil _did_ you bring me up here for?" I demanded.
"Oh, just to enjoy your society. I get lonesome sometimes. I tell you a man does get lonesome in this world, when he has nothing to lean on but a blooming button factory and a stepmother who flits among the world's expensive sanatoria. I know you have never had 'Button, button, who's got the button?' chanted in your ears, but may I ask whether you have ever known the joy of a stepmother? I can see that your answer will be an unregretful negative."
He was quite the fool again, and stared at me vacuously.
"My stepmother is not the common type of juvenile fiction. She has never attempted during her widowhood to rob the orphan or to poison him. Bless your Irish heart, no! She's a good woman, and rich in her own right, but I couldn't stand her dietary. She's afraid I'm going to die, Donovan! She thinks everybody's going to die. Father died of pneumonia and she said ice-water in the finger-bowl did it, and she wanted to have the butler arrested for murder. She had a new disease for me every morning. It was worse than being left with a button-works to draw a stepmother like that. She ate nothing but hot water and zweibach herself, and shuddered when I demanded sausage and buckwheat cakes every day. She wept and talked of the duty she owed to my poor dead father; she had promised him, she said, to safeguard my health; and there I was, as strong as an infant industry, weighed a hundred and seventy-six pounds when I was eighteen, and had broken all the prep school records. She made me so nervous talking about her symptoms, and mine--that I didn't have!--that I began taking my real meals in the gardener's house. But to save her feelings I munched a little toast with her. She caught me one day clearing up a couple of chickens and a mug of bass with the gardener, and it was all over. She had noticed, she said, that I had been coughing of late--I was doing a few cigarettes too many, that was all--and wired to New York for doctors. She had all sorts, Donovan--alienists and pneumogastric specialists and lung experts.