have your grandfather mostly to blame. You would have been married to
Gerrit Ammidon now if he hadn't interfered; you would have been walking
about the Ammidons' garden with your hand on his arm in place of that
Chinese prostitute."

"I don't see why you should make me so miserable," she declared. "I don't
care anything about the garden, it isn't that. Why do you suppose he
brought such a woman home?"

"Pique," he told her; "he couldn't care for her in the way he might for,
well--you. As I said, he'll drop her on his next voyage to the East; he
will leave her and probably never come back to Salem again. I hear that
Ammidon, Ammidon and Saltonstone are planning a new policy--bigger ships,
clippers in the China and California trade; and that means removal to
Boston. Their facilities here are no longer suitable."

She moved, her chin fell upon her hands, propped up with her elbows on
the table. Apparently Edward Dunsack was gazing at the wall beyond her.
Her breast gave a single sharp heave. When Nettie looked up her face was
flushed. "I wish that I were really a bad woman," she spoke in a low
vibrant voice.

"What is bad and what is good?" He still seemed to ignore her,
considering a question that had no personal bearing. "In one country a
thing is thought wrong and in another it is the highest virtue. In one
age this or that is condemned, when, turn the calendar, and everyone is
praising it." He became confidential, the image of kindness. "I'll tell
you what I think is wicked," he pronounced, leaning toward her, "and that
is the way you two were kept apart; unchristian is what I call it."