"Pretty puss," he said impudently, "you need them pink-an'-white nails
of your'n trimmed."
"Don't you dare say a word to me," she flung at him. "Not a word."
"Not a single little word, eh?" He tossed off his whiskey, dropped the
empty glass to the floor behind him, and came a quick stride toward
her, an ugly leer twisting at the corner of his mouth, his one eye
burning. "I've got your ol' man where I want him; he knows it an' I
an' you know it. An' when I like I can have you where I want you, too.
Understan'?"
He had taken another step toward her. The sudden thought leaped up in
her mind that he and her father had had many drinks together before her
arrival. She drew back slowly. Temple, seeing that for the moment all
attention had been drawn from him, reached out for a bottle on the far
end of the mantel.
Then suddenly and without another word being spoken Terry was
galvanized into action. Blenham was coming on toward her and she saw
the look in his eye. She whipped back; her breath caught in her
throat; the color ran out of her cheeks. She glanced wildly toward her
father; his fingers were closing about the neck of a bottle when they
should have been at the neck of a man.
Terry whipped up a book from the table--it was a volume answering many
a question about how to act in society but without any mention of such
a situation as now had arisen--and flung it straight into Blenham's
hectic face.
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