The abdication of the Boss
There is no need to conceal that I was by this time put to it for matters to think upon not clearly related to myself; in other words for matters extraneous to my neighbor's troublesome daughter. In sheer self-defence was I driven to look abroad for interests that would suffice without disquieting me. I was now compelled to admit that there was plainly to be observed in Miss Kate Lansdale something more than a mere winning faith in my powers of self-control. It was difficult at first to suspect that she actually meant to try me to the breaking point. The suspicion brought a false note to that harmony of chastened grief wherein, I had divined, she meant to live out her life. It seemed too Peavey and perverse a thing that she should, finding our truce honorably observed by myself, behave toward me as if with a cold design to bring me down in disgrace—as a proof of her superior powers and my own wretched weakness. Yet this very thing was I obliged regretfully to concede of her before many days. And it was behavior that I could palliate only by reminding myself constantly that she was not only a woman but the daughter of
344
