Mrs. Fenlow’s tone was so sharp and bitter that Henrietta looked at her in surprise. There were signs of trouble in her face, which bore also something of a war-like aspect. Dark hollows under her eyes and little lines about her mouth seemed to tell of mental anguish. But her lips were pressed together determinedly and she held her head high.
“But he can’t go on like this much longer. He’s bound to have a smash-up some of these fine days.”
“What do you mean, Mrs. Fenlow?” queried Henrietta, wide-eyed.
Mrs. Fenlow had been speaking straight ahead of her, into the air, as if, absorbed in her own bitter thoughts, she had for the moment forgotten her companion. At the girl’s question she turned with a quick movement suggestive of the swoop of a bird of prey.
“Pardon me, my dear, if I use disrespectful language about your employer. The Good Lord knows I have reason enough for it. But you needn’t feel uneasy because I say it in your hearing, for I’m going to his office this very day to say the same things, and worse, to his face. When I think of the way he’s used his influence over Mark—and I believed him the pink of perfection and was as pleased as an old fool over his friendship for my boy! My God!”
Her voice sank to a whisper of such fierce indignation that Henrietta shrunk a little away, staring in astonishment at her set face and quivering lips.
“Of course,” she presently went on in a more natural tone, “Mark ought to have known better, he ought to have had more sense and more strength of character than to yield to that sort of temptation. But he was only a lad, and Felix Brand was old enough to know the danger there was in it for a young fellow like that. And Mark admired him so much he thought whatever Brand did must be all right.”
She broke off into sudden silence and Henrietta saw her wipe a tear from the corner of her eye. The girl was so confused and embarrassed by these signs of keen emotion and hidden trouble and so ignorant of their cause that she could think of nothing that seemed well to say or do, and so she, too, remained silent until presently the elder woman turned to her again and spoke more gently.
“Don’t mind me, my dear. I’m in great trouble—on Mark’s account. I’ve had an awful blow, and I don’t know yet how it will all come out. I don’t want to be unjust to Felix Brand, but I can’t help thinking that he’s largely responsible for it. I know he was for the beginning of the whole thing. And I’ve found out that poor Mark’s not the only one—” she was talking off into the air again, oblivious of the girl beside her—“who’s paying for the consequences of Felix Brand’s private pleasures. It’s time he began to pay for some of them himself.”
Her voice, quivering with the indignation and anguish she was trying to conceal, subsided into a muttering whose words Henrietta could not distinguish and finally she lapsed into silence. At the door of the building in which was Brand’s suite of offices she said to her companion: