Triple Pursuit Read Online Free

to Edna.
    â€œI want your advice.”
    â€œOf course.” Edna dreaded that Desmond had come to seek her aid in winning back Maud.
    â€œI think I should go to Father Dowling about this, but since you are the director of the center I felt I should talk to you first.”
    â€œWhat is it?”
    Desmond had taken a seat in her office and was arranging his bony limbs as he searched for a way to say what he had come to say. “It doesn’t seem right to have a man in the center who advances heretical opinions.”
    â€œYou mean Austin Rooney?”
    â€œYou’ve noticed it too?”
    â€œAustin was a professor … .”
    â€œExactly.”
    â€œWhat has he said that disturbs you?”
    â€œI am not worried about his disturbing me. But there are those who may not recognize how dangerous his opinions are until it is too late. His comments on James Joyce could not be made by a sincere Catholic. And he actually claimed that Willa Cather was one of the most important Catholic writers in American literature!”
    â€œIsn’t she a good writer?”
    â€œExcellent. But she wasn’t a Catholic. She was Episcopalian!”
    â€œYou should tell Austin.”
    â€œI did. He already knew. He says that does not affect his judgment of her as a Catholic writer.”

    Desmond’s shock doubtless owed more to losing Maud than to what Austin Rooney had said. It did not seem to Edna that such remarks were harmful to her wards in the Senior Center, but she could think of no way to get rid of this lanky Torquemada.
    â€œMaybe you should talk to Father Dowling.”
    â€œI will!” And Desmond sprang from the chair. “I’ll do it right now. I will tell him that we discussed it.”

2
    1
    Colleen Gallagher’s relations with Mario Liberati ascended to a new plateau after their dinner together, but then seemed to be stuck there. When she dressed in the morning to go to work, she realized she was dressing for him. She would not of course go so far as the miniskirts Aggie affected, even though she was certain she had far better legs. Such display seemed out of place in the offices of a firm as prestigious as Mallard and Bill. But whenever Aggie crossed her legs in the studied way she had, every senior partner paid attention. All Aggie’s alleged independence seemed canceled by this shameless appeal to her feminine charms. Her theory was that she would make it in a man’s world with her talents and her mind, but her popularity with the partners owed far more to the ritual exposure of her shapely thighs. Colleen wavered; she actually tried on some short skirts, but she could not bring herself to buy one. She had assumed that Mario was as susceptible to Aggie’s allurements as the other men in the office. How wrong she was.
    â€œIf she were my sister, I’d tell her to go home and get dressed.” There was real distaste in his tone.
    â€œOh, lots of women wear short skirts.”
    â€œNot any woman I respect.”
    Colleen wondered if Saint Anne had been protecting her unbeknownst to herself. But Mario was not through.

    â€œWhy can’t she just act like a lawyer?”
    â€œDo you want her to wear slacks?”
    â€œWhy not?”
    Colleen was half ashamed to take such pleasure in this revelation of Mario’s distaste for Aggie. “I don’t like touchy-feely women, not in the office,” he said, and that was the end of it. But Colleen heard more in the rest room.
    One of the secretaries swore that Aggie had made a play for Mario, putting a hand on his arm, moving close and lifting her face to his, ostensibly to hear his reply to a legal question she had posed.
    â€œHe actually shook her off and went around behind his desk. So what did she do?”
    â€œWhat?” chorused half a dozen voices.
    â€œShe half sat on the side of his desk, crossed her legs, of course, and began examining her