Dan was as busy as Mac was idle; Mr. Clarke was gloomy and preoccupied;
Mrs. Snawdor was in bed when Nance left home in the morning, and gone to
work when she returned in the evening. The days flashed by in a glorious
succession of forbidden joys, with nobody to interrupt the furious
progress of affairs.
Half of her salary Nance gave to her stepmother, and the other half she
spent on clothes. She bought with taste and discrimination, measuring
everything by the standard set up by her old idol, Miss Stanley at Forest
Home. The result was that she soon began to look very much like the
well-dressed women with whom she touched elbows on the avenue.
She had indeed got the bit between her teeth, and she ran at full tilt,
secure in the belief that she had full control of the situation. As long
as she gave satisfaction in her work, she told herself, and "behaved
right," she could go and come as she liked, and nobody would be the
worse for it.
She did not realize that her scoffing disbelief in Mac's avowals, and her
gay indifference were the very things that kept him at fever heat. He was
not used to being thwarted, and this high-handed little working-girl,
with her challenging eyes and mocking laugh, who had never heard of the
proprieties, and yet denied him favors, was the first person he had ever
known who refused absolutely to let him have his own way. With a boy's
impetuous desire he became obsessed by the idea of her. When he was not
with her, he devised schemes to remind her of him, making love to her by
proxy in a dozen foolish, whimsical ways.
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