For a while neighbors and friends of the Lees'
flocked to the house and were kind, gracious, attentive to Allie.
Then somehow her story, or part of it, became gossip. Her father,
sensitive, cold, embittered by the past, suffered intolerable shame
at the disgrace of a wife's desertion and a daughter's notoriety.
Allie's presence hurt him; he avoided her as much as possible; the
little kindnesses that he had shown, and his feelings of pride in
her beauty and charm, soon vanished. There was no love between them.
Allie had tried hard to care for him, but her heart seemed to be
buried in that vast grave of the West. She was obedient, dutiful,
passive, but she could not care for him. And there came a day when
she realized that he did not believe she had come unscathed through
the wilds of the gold-fields and the vileness of the construction
camps. She bore this patiently, though it stung her. But the loss of
respect for her father did not come until she heard men in his
study, loud-voiced and furious, wrangle over contracts and accuse
him of double-dealing.
Later he told her that he had become involved in financial straits,
and that unless he could raise a large sum by a certain date he
would be ruined.
And it was this day that Allie sat on a bench in the little arbor
and watched the turbulent river.
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