He also permitted himself more ease and freedom in that house--a sort of intimacy _sans facon_--even a certain jocularity.
He also gave himself the privilege of inviting the Ruthvens on board the _Niobrara_; and Ruthven went, furious at being forced to stamp with his open approval an episode which made Neergard a social probability.
How it happened that Rosamund divined something of the situation is not quite clear; but she always had a delicate nose for anything not intended for her, and the thing amused her immensely, particularly because what viciousness had been so long suppressed in Neergard was now tentatively making itself apparent in his leering ease among women he so recently feared.
This, also, was gall and wormwood to Ruthven, so long the official lap-dog of the very small set he kennelled with; and the women of that set were perverse enough to find Neergard amusing, and his fertility in contriving new extravagances for them interested these people, whose only interest had always been centred in themselves.
Meanwhile, Neergard had almost finished with Gerald--he had only one further use for him; and as his social success became more pronounced with the people he had crowded in among, he became bolder and more insolent, no longer at pains to mole-tunnel toward the object desired, no longer overcareful about his mask.

And one day he asked the boy very plainly why he had never invited him to meet his sister.

And he got an answer that he never forgot.
And all the while Ruthven squirmed under the light but steadily inflexible pressure of the curb which Neergard had slipped on him so deftly; he had viewed with indifference Gerald's boyish devotion to his wife, which was even too open and naive to be of interest to those who witnessed it.

But he had not counted on Neergard's sudden hatred of Gerald; and the first token of that hatred fell upon the boy like a thunderbolt when Neergard whispered to Ruthven, one night at the Stuyvesant Club, and Ruthven, exasperated, had gone straight home, to find his wife in tears, and the boy clumsily attempting to comfort her, both her hands in his.
"Perhaps," said Ruthven coldly, "you have some plausible explanation for this sort of thing.

If you haven't, you'd better trump up one together, and I'll send you my attorney to hear it.