"Yes?" she said, as if nothing had occurred, and as if there had been
no interval between Steve's remark and her reply.
Steve could not equal her calmness. He had been strung up when he
spoke, and the interruption had undone him. He reflected ruefully that
he might have said something to the point if he had been allowed to go
straight on; now he had forgotten what he had meant to say.
"Oh, nothing," he replied.
Silence fell once more on the nursery.
Steve was bracing himself up for another attack when suddenly there
came a sound of voices from the stairs. One voice was a mere murmur,
but the other was sharp and unmistakable, the incisive note of Lora
Delane Porter. It brought Steve and Mamie to their feet simultaneously.
"What's it matter?" said Steve stoutly, answering the panic in Mamie's
eyes. "It's not her house, and I got a perfect right to be here."
"You don't know her. I shall get into trouble."
Mamie was pale with apprehension. She knew her Lora Delane Porter, and
she knew what would happen if Steve were to be discovered there. It
was, as Keggs put it, as much as her place was worth.
For a brief instant Mamie faced a future in which she was driven from
Bill's presence into outer darkness, dismissed, and told never to
return. That was what would happen. Sitting and talking with Steve in
the sacred nursery at this time of night was a crime, and she had known
it all the time.
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