"Made you what?"
"Made me go and get a license and marry him. He said"—her lips and tongue were so parched that it was hard to form the words—"he said he was going away in a few days to South America, and that he couldn't go unless he knew I was his wife. I begged him to let me off, but he—he wouldn't. Oh, Mrs. Collingham, what am I to do?"
The appeal helped Junia to rally her stricken powers. It enabled her to say inwardly: "I must act through this girl herself. If I estrange her, I may lose my son." A flash of the lioness wrath with which she trembled might lead to an irretrievably false step. So she made her tone kindly, sympathetic, almost affectionate.
"And Bob—does he know that—that you care for some one else?"
"He never asked me."
"But don't you think you should have told him?"
"That's not so very easy when—"
"But there was some sort of understanding between you and Hubert, wasn't there?"
Jennie's only answer to this was to clasp her hands and say,
"Oh, Mrs. Collingham, how do people get divorces?"