Nevertheless, it seemed that she wished to know definitely what there was to be forgiven, for on this particular morning she said she had a “strange, psychic feeling that something was wrong,” and she desired to verify the suspicion. She read her husband’s letter over and over.
“My dear!” she said, with dangerous calmness. “He says he is at a hotel in Washington, but I do not believe him! Something tells me he is not in Washington at all!”
Miss La Chêne looked appalled.
“Please,” Mrs. Robinson went on, “get the hotel on the long distance for me, my dear. I must know!”
This the willing companion did. Mrs. Robinson took up the receiver and requested to speak to Mr. Robinson. There was a pause. Then a pleasant feminine voice answered her:
“Mr. Robinson is out, but this is Mrs. Robinson speaking. May I—”
It was terrible! In vain did Miss La Chêne point out that Robinson was not a very unusual name, and that there might well be a Mrs. Robinson in that hotel totally unknown to Mr. Lucian Robinson.
“Don’t go on!” cried Mrs. Robinson. “I knew it—I knew it all the time! My heart told me!”
She began at once to prepare for her departure. In every crisis she was wont to fly to some one who could “understand,” and it was now the turn of her sister, Mrs. Milner, to perform this office for her. She was going away. She cared not where she went, in her anguish, but she thought that Miss La Chêne might as well buy her a ticket for Greenwich and look up a train and order a taxi.
“I must go at once,” she said, “while I have the strength. My dear, do I look too terrible?”