She stood up, and turned her back on him proudly, and he knew that she was crying.

“Just a minute,” Richard said, finding himself more shaken than he would have believed.  “It is—­you’re sure it isn’t Blondin?”

“Royal Blondin!” There was in her tone a pleasant, childish scorn and indignation that again he thought amusing.  She sat down facing him again, and quite openly dried her eyes, and smiled.  “No, it’s more serious,” Harriet said.  “It means constant irritation for your mother.  It means that she is always in a state of exasperation.  I think—­I don’t know, but I have reason to think—­ that she made it a choice, for Mary Putnam, between us!”

“She has no right to do that,” said Richard, soberly.

“I’m not—­you know that!—­criticizing,” Harriet said.  The man sighed, and tossed a few papers on his desk.

“Sometimes I have hoped,” he began, on a fresh tack, “that you and the boy might fancy each other.  I’m not satisfied with Ward.  He needs an anchor.  That would be a solution for us all!” It was a random shot, but to his surprise she flushed brightly.

“Ward knows that there is no chance of that,” she said, quickly, “dearly as I love him!”

Richard’s eyes widened with whimsical amusement again.

“So you’ve refused Ward, have you?”

“Long ago,” she answered, simply.  The man laughed; but a moment later his face grew dark and troubled again as he said: 

“I hardly know what to do!  The girl is the first consideration, of course, and she needs you.  I feel that she is not only safe, but happy, when you are here.  My mother needs you, too; she would pay, like the rest of us, for worrying you out of the house.  She couldn’t manage it—­bringing Nina into town, ordering her clothes, entertaining the boy’s friends, answering letters—­I know what it is!  I’ve unfortunately reached a place where I’ve got to feel free.  You’ve heard us all talk of this new asbestos merger—­my dear girl, that will keep me going like a slave for months, perhaps years!  I won’t know when I am to be home, or what I shall have to cancel.  I wish I could convince you that a woman of seventy-five and a girl of seventeen are not exactly a jury—­”

“This is the jury!” Harriet said, touching her own breast lightly.  He looked at her sombrely.

“I suppose so!  I suppose I can’t convince you how badly we need you.  My mother—­well, she has always taken life that way; she can’t change now.  I shall have Ida Tabor as a fixture here, I suppose, Nina running wild, Ward never home!  You—­you give me exactly what I want here!  Good dinners, fires, hospitality, a good report from Nina and Ward; I can bring men home, I can—­” He mused, with a smile touching his fine, tired face.  “In short, I wish there was some fortunate young man somewhere to make you Mrs. Smith or Jones, Miss Field, and let you come back to the Carters immediately again!”

Harriet laughed, sighed sharply immediately upon the laugh.