“Nothing!” his wife said, taking the reply into her own mouth, as she put an arm about her sister and stood facing him scornfully. “Nothing that will make up to her for what you did. That’s something you can never do, because even you can’t recall and do again what has passed.”
Troubled, admiring Anne for the proud anger of her attitude, and secretly pleased with her “even you,” he gave her a queer look in which there was a gleam of doggedness. “I’ll try, at any rate,” he said; and then, more casually, he addressed his sister-in-law: “You drove over alone, Mildred?”
“As soon as John left the house after dinner,” she said. “I kept up till he went, and then I found I couldn’t bear it any longer—I had to ask for help. After he put her into the car with me at the club, he asked me why I was so quiet, and I said I had a bad headache;—it was true enough, too. She said that was ‘too bad’ and immediately proposed that we should ‘all three’ drive into town after dinner to a cabaret vaudeville and dance and late supper!”
“She did?” Hobart asked. “Not just after you’d told them your head ached?”
“Yes. She said the way to cure a headache was to ‘be gay and forget it.’ ”
“What did you tell her, Mildred?”
“I said I couldn’t and that John couldn’t go either, because he had to be in his office early to-morrow morning. He said no; he didn’t need more than three or four hours’ sleep, and he would be only too glad to escort Julietta, since if I had a headache, I’d probably go to bed, and he’d have nothing to do. At dinner I asked him please not to go; please to stay with me, instead. He said in his kindest way that he’d be glad to, any other night, but it was impossible this evening since he’d ‘promised Julietta,’ and couldn’t possibly break a promise. So he went—and I found I couldn’t stay in the house and think it over any longer. Hobart, you mustn’t go out there and help them pretend to play golf to-morrow.”
“Very well,” he said, gravely. “I’ll do whatever you wish. But isn’t it just possible you’d rather have me with them? If Julietta really is the designing person you believe she is——”
“If!” Mildred cried with sudden loudness. “ ‘If’ she is! You don’t understand, Hobart. This is what happened in the car just before we reached her house to-night;—it happens all the time. She made a gesture—she always talks with gestures—and her hand smashed against the door-frame and broke the crystal of her wrist-watch. She said she was sure the works were broken, too. It was a plain gold watch, old and not very valuable, but she made a great lamentation over it. John took it from her, put it in his pocket, and said that since it was broken in our car it was our place to restore it; she should have a new one as near like it as possible to-morrow;—it would be the ‘greatest privilege’ to obtain it for her! She knew that was just what he’d do, and she broke it on purpose, of course.”
“Mildred, you really believe——”