Then Robert raised his stricken eyes.
And as he raised them, a great shock ran through Robert, and after it he stiffened. His eyes popped, as if he could not quite believe what he saw, and his body swayed forward. Robert, with a hoarse, incoherent scream, ran straight at Beatrice Boller and snatched away the hat from under her arm.
"That's Mary's! That's Mary's!" he cried hysterically. "That's Mary's hat, because I was with her the day she bought it, and I'd know it among ten thousand hats! Yes, and it's torn and broken—it's all smashed on this side!"
Greenish white, jaw sagging, Robert looked from one to the other of them.
"You—you're afraid to tell me!" said he. "She—there was an accident! I can see that by the hat. There was an accident and she was hurt and—where is she now? Where is she now? Good God! Is she—dead?"
"She isn't dead," Anthony said queerly, because he had been looking at Beatrice and feeling his flesh crawl as he looked.
"Then where is Mary? Why don't you tell me about it?" Robert stormed on. "What's the matter? Is she badly hurt? Doesn't she want me? Hasn't she tried to send for me?" And whirling upon Beatrice, the unfortunate young man threw out his hands and cried: "You tell me, if they will not! What has happened to her? Where did you get the hat?"
Normally, Beatrice Boller was the very last mortal in the world to inflict pain upon a fellow-being; but the normal Beatrice was far away just now.
As Anthony noted with failing heart, it was a big moment for the outraged creature before Robert Vining, for she was about to make another of the accursed sex to suffer. It did not seem humanly possible that she could communicate her personal view of Mary to Robert; but certainly Beatrice was accomplishing a very dramatic pause, and in it her lips drew back and showed her beautiful teeth.
"The young lady is a friend of yours, too?" she asked very sweetly.