She put the remark aside as irrelevant. "Why, that should have been done long ago. But what does it mean?" she persisted, holding to the main point.
He put the paper down with a sigh. "It means what it says, Eleanor, I'm afraid," he said.
She stared at him, a shade paler, while the dread in her eyes grew more pronounced. "Means what it says?" she repeated. "Then it isn't merely a wild concoction of the kind they're always inventing?"
"It's more than that, I'm afraid." Bobby rose and began to pace up and down. "They do say nasty things," he said, apparently addressing the walls, or anything rather than his wife.
Her eyes followed him with an intense anxiety, as her white lips barely framed the question: "At the clubs?"
He nodded. "Yes, there, and—at other places besides. At the District Attorney's, for instance"—
"You don't mean?"—she began incredulously.
"That they suspect her? Yes."
Mrs. Bobby sat down as if her strength suddenly had failed her. "But that's absurd—impossible!" she said, after a moment.
"Perhaps; but—it's the impossible that some times happens." Mrs. Bobby was silent in incredulous horror; and he went on, after a pause: "You see, she's in a confoundedly unpleasant position. There are all kinds of queer stories going the round. They say now that she was secretly married to Halleck; that he had some kind of power over her, at least; and then having every motive to get rid of him, being engaged to Gerard"—