“Another woman!” said she, and laughed.
“If things happened as they should,” Edward went on, with heightened color, “I’d go away—now. I’d go off—”
“With another woman!” said she, and laughed again.
He was glad to hear the doorbell ring. If he hadn’t gone out of the room just then, he felt that he would certainly have put himself in the wrong. His patience was exhausted.
“Oh, are you leaving me now, Edward?” Mildred called after him mockingly. “Hadn’t you better take a clean collar—or a toothbrush, at least?”
Evidently she hadn’t heard the bell, and he did not condescend to enlighten her. He made up his mind not to speak to her again, no matter what the provocation. He went on down the stairs to the front door, and opened it.
“Edward!” she cried.
Ha! She was giving herself away now! She was worried!
He opened the door wider, and, as he did so, he heard her start down the stairs. It was only a bill, left lying on the veranda. He stepped out to pick it up.
“Edward!” he heard her call. “Eddie!”