And one day he asked the boy very
plainly why he had never invited him to meet his sister. And he got an
answer that he never forgot.
And all the while Ruthven squirmed under the light but steadily
inflexible pressure of the curb which Neergard had slipped on him so
deftly; he had viewed with indifference Gerald's boyish devotion to his
wife, which was even too open and naive to be of interest to those who
witnessed it. But he had not counted on Neergard's sudden hatred of
Gerald; and the first token of that hatred fell upon the boy like a
thunderbolt when Neergard whispered to Ruthven, one night at the
Stuyvesant Club, and Ruthven, exasperated, had gone straight home, to
find his wife in tears, and the boy clumsily attempting to comfort her,
both her hands in his.
"Perhaps," said Ruthven coldly, "you have some plausible explanation for
this sort of thing. If you haven't, you'd better trump up one together,
and I'll send you my attorney to hear it. In that event," he added,
"you'd better leave your joint address when you find a more convenient
house than mine.
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