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"Yes, I can. Uncle Robert has always been my best friend." He
was tremendously moved. He felt a real distress about his uncle,
about his three young cousins.
Edna stood up, leaving her crab-flake cocktail untasted. "This is
the silliest thing - "
"Very well, if you won't listen to me I'll go to Uncle Robert and
tell him the whole story – he's bound to hear it sooner or later. And
afterward I'll go to old Moses Sloane."
Edna faltered back into her chair.
"Don't talk so loud," she begged him. Her eyes blurred with
tears. "You have no idea how your voice carries. You might have
chosen a less public place to make all these crazy accusations."
He didn't answer.
"Oh, you never liked me, I know," she went on. "You're just
taking advantage of some silly gossip to try and break up the only
interesting friendship I've ever had. What did I ever do to make you
hate me so?"
Still Anson waited. There would be the appeal to his chivalry,
then to his pity, finally to his superior sophistication - when he had
shouldered his way through all these there would be admissions, and
he could come to grips with her. By being silent, by being
impervious, by returning constantly to his main weapon, which was
his own true emotion, he bullied her into frantic despair as the
luncheon hour slipped away. At two o'clock she took out a mirror and
a handkerchief, shined away the marks of her tears and powdered the
slight hollows where they had lain. She had agreed to meet him at her
own house at five.
When he arrived she was stretched on a chaise-longue which
was covered with cretonne for the summer, and the tears he had
called up at luncheon seemed still to be standing in her eyes. Then he
was aware of Gary Sloane's dark anxious presence upon the cold
hearth.
"What's this idea of yours?" broke out Sloane immediately. "I
understand you invited Edna to lunch and then threatened her on the
basis of some cheap scandal."
Anson sat down.
"I have no reason to think it's only scandal."
"I hear you're going to take it to Robert Hunter, and to my
father."