“Any wife would,” Anne interrupted, severely. “Especially with a husband as odd as John Tower. So far as women are concerned he’s nothing but a grown-up child! He believes everything they tell him, and Julietta knows it. It’s because he is so perfectly simple and naïve and trustful—with women—that Mildred is wretched about him.”
“What’s she said to old John about it?”
“Nothing.”
“Why not?”
“Because if she did,” Mrs. Simms explained, “it might look as if she were jealous.”
“Well, she is, isn’t she?”
“Not at all. She’s terribly hurt, and naturally she’s angry and rather disgusted to think her husband would let such a person as Julietta Voss have so much effect upon him.”
Hobart’s intelligent forehead became lined with the effort to solve the puzzle before him. “You say she’s terribly hurt and she’s angry and she’s disgusted because she thinks her husband is letting another woman carry on with him; but she’s not jealous. How would you define jealousy, Anne?”
“As nothing that a girl like Julietta Voss could make a lady feel,” Anne returned, with no little heat. “Mildred is a lady—and I’m going back to her. Be kind enough to hurry with your ablutions, if you intend any.”
He went away meekly to obey, and when he returned to the veranda he still looked meek, though there was in his glance a sly skepticism readily visible to his wife. She was sitting by the veranda railing with her sister, who was staring forth into the darkness in a manner somewhat pathetic; but, as her brother-in-law thought her imaginings absurd, his sympathies were not greatly roused. “Hasn’t that old Don Giovanni of yours finished playing it out yet, Mildred?” he inquired.