Innes had been spelling on his fingers. Maud's little eyes turned to the girl. They were bright and peered from folds of her grayish flesh.
'Secretary, eh?' she said bluntly. She waddled over to the chair in which Alice had been sitting. She collapsed into it. Her fat little body simply melted its bones and fell down. She stretched her ugly legs out and looked up at the mantel. Innes reached for the candy box. He did this automatically and handed it down. Maud dipped her fingers in.
'Have some candy?' she said to Alice, who shuddered 'No.' The woman stuffed three pieces into her mouth and grinned at the same time.
'Look here, Maud . . . Excuse me, Alice.' Innes snatched a pad of paper from the incomprehensible folds of the woman's dress and produced a pencil. He scribbled.
'What's that?' Maud said, regarding what he had written without much interest. 'Oh, financial, eh?' She grinned. 'My financial position. Innes, you're a card.'
He tapped the paper with his forefinger, impatiently. He was quite ready to dominate this sister.
'I've still got the two Liberty Bonds,' Maud said. 'Isabel hid them on me. ' She went into rusty laughter.
Innes pantomined.
'Oh, I dunno,' Maud said. 'Spent it, I guess. Eh?' She took another chocolate. 'It goes,' she said slobbering and sucking in the overflow with a loud slupp, 'Isabel's the one. She never spent an easy cent in her life, and it goes just the same.' Maud heaved with mirth. 'Makes her pretty mad. Should think it would.'
'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.
