Enchanted Spring Read Online Free PDF Page B

the drains you’ve put on his income.”
    “My father — bankrupt? You — why, you don’t know what you’re saying. My father is a very wealthy man,” Carey stammered wildly.
    “Was, dearie,
was!”
snorted Margaret. “That was a long time ago.”
    She drew a long, hard breath and said through her teeth, “When you danced into the library and informed him that you were spending ten thousand dollars for a car that good-for-nothing Ronnie Norris had sold you, I could have wrung your neck!”
    “It might interest you to know that Ronnie Norris and I are going to be married,” Carey said frostily, though her defiance was a little shaky.
    Margaret gave a little derisive snort. “Want to bet on it?” she demanded. “After what the office force knows of what happened this afternoon? There’ll be ‘extras’ on the street in an hour — announcing that the banking committee refused to renew your father’s loans and that he is bankrupt.”
    “I — don’t believe it!”
    Margaret shrugged. “You always were a silly little fool,” she said dryly.
    Carey realized that the taxi had turned into Sixty-third Street and was stopping in front of the house. Her knees trembled a little as she stepped out of the car. Margaret’s hand shot out and steadied her as they went swiftly up the steps and into the house.
    “The doctor is with Mr. Silas, Miss Carey,” John answered Carey’s stammered, “How is my father?”
    She and Margaret, without exchanging a word, went swiftly up the stairs and huddled outside the closed door of her father’s room, behind which they heard the soft murmur of voices.
    Carey looked curiously at Margaret as they waited there, and there was a look on Margaret’s face that made Carey say suddenly, involuntarily, “Why — you
love
him, don’t you?”
    The slow, dull red that burned beneath Margaret’s brown skin was answer even without her tense words: “I worship the very shoes he walks in.”
    “Oh!” breathed Carey.
    Margaret nodded grimly. “I suppose it sounds pretty funny to a snip like you. A woman nearly forty, homely as unmitigated sin, in love with a man who looks upon her only as a bit of the office furniture. Your kind thinks that there is some mystic law that prevents anybody over twenty from falling in love — but women like me know what love means. Something your kind can never know.”
    “But — why should you hate me so?” demanded Carey. “I’ve never harmed you in my life — ”
    “I dislike what you’ve done to him,” Margaret said through her teeth. “You’ve used him shamefully. You’ve drained him of money and health and strength. And what have you given him in return? Practically a death-blow — in telling him you wanted to marry a
worm
like Ronnie Norris.”
    “You think he was going to — to — do
that
because of Ronnie? Oh, but that’s crazy — that’s fantastic!”
    “You think so?” Margaret’s tone stung like a whiplash.
    Before Carey could answer, the door of Silas’s room opened and they caught a glimpse of a white-clad nurse beside the bed. The door closed then behind the portly form of Silas’s personal physician.
    “Oh, there you are, my dear,” he greeted Carey warmly. “Don’t look so terrified. Your father’s going to be all right, providing — ”
    Carey caught her breath, her eyes wide, prayerful.
    “Providing what, Doctor?” Margaret demanded swiftly.
    “Providing he slows up,” answered the doctor. “Providing he gives up his business, spends the next six months, at the very least, in bed, or just sitting around doing absolutely nothing. Otherwise — ” His little shrug finished the speech and a cold hand clamped itself about Carey’s heart.
    “There’s an old farm down South, where he was born,” Margaret said crisply. “He’s always kept it for sentimental reasons, though he hasn’t been back there in years. It’s at the edge of a small town — but I’m afraid it’s pretty primitive.”
    “My