Was she not lovely and convincing in her grief—and—and purely in the right? How preposterous to think otherwise! To disagree with an angel! Heavens! Was she not blond and adorable? Bah! How silly husbands are! What a tempest in a teapot they make of nothing—to misconstrue the simplest and most innocent of questions and the most natural of whispered replies into high treason! Did not Benton owe Mr. Lamont the most abject of apologies? Of course. He owed a still deeper apology to Mrs. Benton for “mortifying her beyond words.” Innocence in the hands of a brute! A lily in the grip of a brigand! She who had given all to him—her love—her devotion—could he doubt her for an instant? Had he ever doubted her? Had she ever been jealous of him? How lucky he was to have a wife like her. Henceforth he could go to the theatre alone—forever—nightly—as long as he lived—and stay there until he died.
Passionately, with a sharp cry of contempt, she slipped off her marriage ring, and flung it away forever on the floor of the brougham, where he groped for it out of breath, and returned it to her imploringly, seizing her clenched hand and begging her to let him restore it to its rightful finger. That he restored it finally came as a reward for a score of humble promises, including his entire belief in her innocence, and the meekest of confessions that his undying love for her alone had been responsible for his uncontrollable jealousy. Her slim, satin-slippered foot still kept tapping in unison to her beating heart, but victory was hers. It shone in her large blue eyes, in the warm glow overspreading her delicate cheeks, her lovely throat and neck. Her whole mind exulted as she thought of “Jack.” How she would pour out to him in a long letter all of her pent-up heart. She could hardly wait for morning to come in which to write it, upon the faintly scented paper he loved, and which he could detect in his box at the club among a dozen others by its violet hue.
After all, what had Lamont said to have raised all this tragic row? To have been struck like a common ruffian in the public street, before the eyes of people he knew, and several of whom he had dined with—or hoped to—and for what?
Nine of the simplest words, all told, were what Benton had overheard, and not a syllable more. Lamont’s quick question, “At three, then?” and her smiling, whispered promise: “No—at three-thirty, impatient child.”
What could have been more innocent? Has a gentleman no right to hurriedly ask the time—and be sweetly chided for his impatience?
Far better had he refrained and discreetly sent her a note by some trusted servant to her dressmaker’s (for he kept tally of her “fittings”)—far better—one of those brief notes, whose very telltale briefness reads in volumes. They are always typical of serious affairs.
Alas! the affair had only begun. The two patrolmen recounted the incident on their return from their “beat” to the sergeant at the desk, interspersing their narrative with good-humored laughter and some unprintable profanity.
“’Twas him,” they said, referring to Benton. They expatiated on his riches and the good looks of his wife, emphasized their own magnanimity in refusing to arrest, and covered Lamont’s level, handsome head with a wreath of glory—all to the delight of a young reporter hanging around for an instalment, and eager to “make good” with his night editor.
In little less than two hours the whole story was on the press—that most powerful gossiper in the world! Needless to say, it printed the story to a nicely—a giant high-speed press, capable of thousands of copies an hour. It even took the trouble to fold them in great packages, which were carried on the shoulders of men and thrown into wagons, that dashed off to waiting trains, which in turn rushed them to distant cities.
It made the young reporter’s reputation, but it nearly ruined pretty Mrs. Benton’s, and brought Jack Lamont before the public eye by a wide-spread publicity he had never dreamed of.