“It’s the way it’s going to be, anyhow,” she murmured.
“I can’t let you go,” he said, as if arguing with an unseen auditor.
She nodded in a somewhat contracted space. “That’s it,” she announced. “It has to be.”
It was only a few days later that Nancy Almar, driving past a well-known house-furnishing shop on her way home to tea, was surprised to observe her brother standing, with a salesman at his elbow, in trancelike contemplation of a small white enameled ice-box. With her customary decision, Nancy ordered her chauffeur to stop, and entering the shop by another door she stood close beside Hickson during his purchase of the following articles: the ice-box, an improved coffee percolator and a complete set of kitchen china of an extremely decorative pattern.
“Bless me, Ned,” she said suddenly in his ear, “might one ask when you are going to housekeeping, and with whom?”
There was no denying that Ned’s start was guilty, and his manner confused as he answered, “Oh, they’re not for me—”
The salesman who, perhaps, lacked tact, or possibly only wanted to get away to wait on another customer, said at this point:
“And the address, sir? I have the name—Mrs. Max Riatt.”
“Riatt married!” cried Nancy. “But to whom? I thought he had nothing left in the world.”
“He hasn’t,” answered Ned, hastily scribbling the address on a card and handing it to the man.