"It was wrong," she says, tremulously. "You have stayed home from business, and——"
He laughs, it seems so utterly absurd. Many a day has he been away from the factory and perhaps not half so innocently employed.
"See here," he begins, "we will let Floyd settle it when he comes home. Good heavens, won't he make it hot for Marcia! I shall tell him myself."
"No, no!" and Violet starts up in anguish. "You must not utter a word!"
"Well, why?" asks Eugene, with a kind of obstinate candor. "I'm sure—flirting, indeed! Why, Marcia couldn't be an hour in the room with any fellow, young or old, that she wouldn't make big eyes at him. I like to see people turn saints at short notice. I'll go off and have it out with her myself, and make her keep a civil tongue in the future."
"Eugene!" Violet cries, in distress, as he is half-way through the hall. Oh, what shall she do? Must she go wild with all this pain and shame?
"Well," he ejaculates, again standing indecisively.
"She said other things," and the dry lips move convulsively. "I must know; I cannot live with this horrible shadow over everything. There is no one else to ask."
He comes and seats himself on the divan beside her, and there is a glimpse of Floyd in his face. His voice falls to a most persuasive inflection as he rejoins, "Tell me, ask me anything, and I will answer you truly. There has never been any horrible thing since you came here, or ever that I can remember. What did Marcia say?"
Perhaps, after all, Marcia did not tell the exact truth, and Violet's despairing face lightens. Marcia may have Charles Lamb's way of thinking the truth too precious to be wasted upon everybody, for she is sometimes extremely economizing. And Violet must know.