“Yes. Isn’t it distressing?” was the response. “Oh course, I won’t mention it to anybody but you. I supposed you knew all about it since you’re her most intimate friend.”
Mrs. Cromwell made an effort to speak coherently. “Let me try to understand you,” she said. “You say that Lydia Dodge came to you this afternoon——”
“It was really evening,” the voice interrupted, in correction. “Almost seven. And their engagement was in town at half past. That’s why he kept calling her up so excitedly.”
“And she told you,” Mrs. Cromwell continued, “Lydia Dodge told you that her husband, John Dodge, was philandering with——”
“There was no doubt about it whatever,” the voice interrupted. “Some friends of hers had seen an actual caress exchanged between Mr. Dodge and the other woman.”
“What!”
“Yes. That’s what she told me.”
“Wait!” Mrs. Cromwell begged. “Lydia Dodge told you that John Dodge——”
“Yes,” the voice of Amelia Battle replied colourlessly in the telephone. “It seems too tragic, and it was such a shock to me—I never dreamed that people of forty or fifty had troubles like that—but it was what she came here to tell me. Of course, she didn’t have time to tell me much, because she was so upset and Mr. Dodge was in such a hurry for her to come home. I never dreamed there was anything but peace and happiness between them, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” gasped Mrs. Cromwell. “But Amelia——”