“Vas you reeng?” said the waiter doubtfully, retreating a step.
“I will not be accountable for that woman’s expenses from this time forth,” said Douglas, pointing at her, “You can keep her at your own risk, or turn her into the streets to pursue her profession, as you please.”
The waiter, smiting vaguely, looked first at the retreating figure of Douglas, and then at Marian.
“I want another room, if you please,” she said. “One on any of the upper floors will do; but I must have my things moved there at once.”
Her instructions were carried out after some parley. In the meantime, Douglas’s man servant appeared, and said that he had been instructed to remove his master’s luggage.
“Is Mr. Forster leaving the hotel?” she asked.
“I dont know his arrangements, madam.”
“I guess I do, then,” said a sulky man, who was preparing to wheel away Marian’s trunk. “He’s about to shift his billet to the Gran’ Central.”
Marian, still in a towering rage, sat down in her new room to consider her situation. To fix her attention, which repeatedly wandered to what had passed between her and Douglas, she counted her money, and found that she had, besides a twenty pound note which she had brought with her from London, only a few loose dollars in her purse. Her practice in housekeeping at Westbourne Terrace and Holland Park had taught her the value of money too well to let her suppose that she could afford to remain at a first rate American hotel with so small a sum in her possession. At home Conolly had made her keep a separate banking account; and there was money to her credit there; but in her ignorance of the law, she was not sure that she had not forfeited all her property by eloping. She resolved to move at once into some cheap lodging, and to live economically until she could ascertain the true state of her affairs, or until she could obtain some employment, to support her. She faced poverty without fear, never having experienced it.
It was still early in the afternoon when she left the hotel and drove to the Crawfords’.