"Mrs. Barlock," said her husband's senior partner, severely, rising and confronting her, "I am surprised at you—I am, indeed. I was certainly of the opinion that in a matter of this sort you would at least give your husband—a most considerate husband—the benefit of the doubt; that you would at any rate give him an opportunity to explain himself. How do we know what he is to Conway or Conway to him?" And the senior partner, growing eloquent, declaimed as if he were speaking of Hecuba instead of the mysterious Conway. "Is it not more than likely that you are doing him a grievous wrong by even so much as imagining for a moment that this extraordinary telegraphic communication from—er—this Bub—person has any reference whatsoever to—er—uh—domestic or family affairs? Wait until Jack returns, my dear Mrs. Barlock, and I've not the least doubt that he will explain everything to your entire satisfaction, and"——
"Oh, yes, explanations—explanations!" exclaimed the junior partner's wife, giving her eyes a final dab and rising. "You'll telegraph him on the train to have some sort of an explanation ready, and then he'll come in here with a deeply aggrieved countenance—just as if he had had no part at all in endeavoring to break up this poor Mr. Conway's home and tell me hypocritically that I've wronged him and all that. I know you horrid men and the way you stand by each other through thick and thin, no matter how wicked you know each other to be. I shall be back here at 4 o'clock, when Jack is due, Mr. Topknot, and notwithstanding the way he is treating me, if there is any possible way I can prevent him from meeting this Mr. Conway and having a disgraceful altercation with him, I shall do it. And I promise you that I shall be able to detect very easily whether he is telling me the truth or not when I demand him to explain this terrible business."
Saying which, the junior partner's wife pulled her veil down and swept out of the office with the general air of a deceived wife in a play.
"Huh! it'd naturally be thought I'd know enough not to make such an egregious ass of myself as to show her that telegram!" growled the senior partner to himself. "There'll be all kinds of a bobbery around here this afternoon, I suppose, and if this Conway matter proves to be something that Barlock wouldn't want his wife to know about—and I've no doubt now that it will prove just that way, the young idiot!—why, he'll be sulky with me, and there'll be little or no work done on those new cases, and—oh, it's a devil of a mess all around, that's what it is!"
For all of which, however, the senior partner had his work to do, and he pitched in and was up to his ears in it until about half-past 3, when the junior partner's wife, with tightly pursed lips and an air of ominous calm, arrived at the office with her mother, a handsome, haughty, uncompromising-looking woman with a great mass of white pompadour hair and an expression of unyielding austerity. The junior partner's wife and her mother replied to the senior partner's courteous greetings with unusual stiffness, plainly indicating their joint belief that he was in league with the absent junior partner in his nefarious doings, or that he was at any rate attempting to shield the young man.
"Shall I turn on the electric fan, madam?" the senior partner politely asked the junior partner's wife's mother.
"I am quite cool enough, thank you," said the junior partner's wife's mother, snappily.
"Shall I fetch you a glass of iced water?" he asked the junior partner's wife.
"You are very kind, but I am not in the least thirsty," she replied in a tone which seemed to convey the idea as plainly as words that she feared he might put something in the water that wouldn't do her any good.
The senior partner turned to his work. Thus the three sat in unbroken silence for fully fifteen minutes, when the sound of a blustery, cheerful voice was heard in the office boy's anteroom, and a few seconds later a tall, broad-shouldered, frank-faced young man entered the office. When he saw his wife he made for her with both arms extended.