“Forgive me—it was all my fault—yet not mine—good-bye—”
“She always wishes to be left that way,” said Cecilia, as if she did not know what she was saying.
They walked to the corner together. “I am not well,” she said. He ventured to look at her; she was wan and old, and her eyes were deep circled in blue-black and she was blue-black at the corners of her mouth, at the edges of her nostrils. “I must go home—they will telephone Mrs. Ridgie. Don’t say where I was taken ill. Forgive me—it was all my fault—yet not mine—good-bye——” She did not put out her hand to him, but stood off from him with fear and anguish in her eyes.
“The woman’s a fraud—a——” he began.
She turned upon him with a fury of which he would not have believed her capable. “Go! go!” she exclaimed, as if she were driving away a dog. “Already you may have lost me my love. Go!”
He shrank from her. She walked rapidly away, and he saw her hail a cab, enter it, saw the cab drive away. With his head down he went in the opposite direction. “I think I must be mad,” he muttered. He thrust his hands deep into the outside pockets of his ulster. He drew out his right hand—in it was her purse, which she had given him to carry because it did not fit comfortably into her muff. “No,” he said, “she was with me.”
He put the purse in the pocket and strode back the way he had come. He turned into the quiet little street, went to Mrs. Ramsay’s door, lifted and dropped the knocker several times. The maid opened the door a few inches and showed a frowning face.
Frothingham widened the space by thrusting himself into it. “Tell Mrs. Ramsay that Lord Frothingham wishes to speak to her,” he said in a tone that made her servant his servant.
She went into the ghost-chamber and soon reappeared. “Mrs. Ramsay is too exhausted to see anyone to-day.”
“Bah!” exclaimed Frothingham, and stalked past the maid and into the ghost-chamber.