“If you do not choose to consider my feelings in the matter, I’ll not complain.  You are master and mistress of the home.  I tell you now, as I have told you before, that if Tasper Britt had come out with the whole truth Frank would not be in prison.  You must not expect that I will sit at table with a man who has so persecuted my—­husband!” She hesitated a moment before she spoke the last word.  She caressed it with loving inflection.  A moment later her cheeks were burning hotly.  She went out into the hall, got her sunshade, and left the house.

She still had her work at the bank; the progress of liquidation was slow.  Tasper Britt, from his office window, saw her coming.  She wore no hat.  The parasol framed the face that was still glowing after her battle for the sanctity of her love.

“It’s worth it!” he muttered; but not even to himself did Britt mention what the price was.

Mr. Harnden’s comment, delayed for some minutes, was that the girl was putting it almighty strong.

“It’s her loyalty.  She can’t help it.  She takes it from me,” declared the mother, pouring another cup of tea for her shaken nerves.

“She does, hey?” Mr. Harnden’s voice indicated that he was not commending the quality mentioned.

His wife was decidedly tart in her retort that he ought to be thankful for the loyalty that enabled her to put up with all the privations of the past.

“Well, let the past be the past.  I’ve got my feet placed now—­and that hired girl is coming to-morrow.”  The idea of his new prosperity revived Mr. Harnden’s natural optimism.  “That jailbird hasn’t been away from her long enough for her to be weaned from her foolishness about him.  He’s safe away for seven years, and a whole lot can happen in that time—­even to that loyalty that women seem to set such store by.  My friend Britt comes here—­into our family!  That’s understood.  If Vona wants to eat off’n the mantelshelf in her room, well and good till she’s tamed.  And now—­to work—­to work!”

Mr. Harnden was truly very much up-and-coming those days.  He rose and shook out first one leg and then the other, with the manner of a scratching rooster.  The movements settled the legs of his trousers.  He had a new suit of his own.  It resembled Tasper Britt’s.  That new suit and the yellow gloves and the billycock hat excited some interest in Egypt; the new hitch that Harnden possessed excited much more interest.  He was driving a “trappy” bay nag, and his new road wagon had rubber tires.  Nor was Mr. Harnden doing any more inventing, so he declared to the public.  The public, however, did declare behind his back that he must have invented something in the way of a system to be able to wear those clothes and drive that hitch.  To be sure, there were some who insisted that the matter of Vona was still potent with Britt and that Britt’s money was behind Harnden.  But there were more who were certain that it was not the style of Britt to invest in any such remote possibility as a girl who openly declared that she proposed to wait seven years for the man of her choice.