“You’re here all alone, and laughing so. Are you ill?”
“Ill? Why no—I’m all right. Only something struck me as being very funny. We don’t have to read the comic sections of the papers, Griggs. All we have to do is look for the comedy in our own lives.”
“Yes—Madame—I suppose so. But don’t you think you had better let me send for Marie? She will help you to your room. You are——”
“No, Griggs, I’ll pull myself together in a moment, and I’m not going to my room. I shall wait here until Miss Elinor or Mr. Howard come in.”
“But it is only ten-thirty,” Griggs protested, “and they may not come for hours.”
“Miss Elinor is bound to come in early. She is at the Thurstons’. Just put another log on the fire, and I’ll wait.”
“Very well, Madame,” Griggs attended to the fire, and left the room, turning as he reached the door. “I shall be just outside should you wish me.”
“Thank you, Griggs,” she murmured, gazing intently into the flames.
With only a dulled pain she was able to visualize what Hugh was doing, where he had gone since he left her. Her instinct told her he had gone straight to Geraldine DeLacy. And, right as is so often the case with a woman who loves, Marjorie Benton’s instinct had been right.
Straight as a homing pigeon, the infatuated man had rushed from the room where he had had his aggravating and unsatisfactory interview with his wife, and, waiting long enough only to telephone to be sure that she was in, he had hurried to the woman who had taken his wife’s place in his affections. No thought of the pain of the woman he had left behind. Only an eagerness to be with the new love—to hear her soft voice whisper words of love and compassion, to tell him there was nought else in the world beside their love, to reassure him he had been right.