“Ebner!” she exclaimed solemnly, “you don’t mean to tell me you haven’t heard? Why, there it is sticking right out of your pocket, and you mean to tell me you haven’t even read it? Oh, Ebner!” she half sobbed, “isn’t it terrible!”
“Oh, that!” he grinned, wrenching out the extra, flinging off his overcoat and coat, and chucking both on the sofa. “’Bout the slickest piece of free advertisement I’ve seen in years.”
The grin broadened.
“Didn’t cost him a cent.”
“Oh, Ebner! How my heart aches for his poor wife!”
“Poor? You don’t call a woman poor who’s got a brownstone front all her own—horses, three meals a day, and a butler—do yer? Any one’d think half the world had come to an end and the other half was about to fail in business.”
“To—to think!” she faltered. “Oh, I’d like to believe, Ebner, there wasn’t a word of truth in it—I just would. I’d just like to believe the whole thing was—just—just—like some awful dream. It’s so terrible—a man of his refinement and position, married! Oh! why do you stand there looking at me? Why can’t you say something, Ebner? Can’t you see how terrible it all is—just as he was becoming an old friend—girlie’s happiness and all! What can we expect now? Society will close her gates to him—yes, she will—I’m just as sure of it as my name’s Emma Ford. We’ll have to begin all over again, dear——”
“Close her gates, eh? Not to any alarmin’ extent,” he declared. “I’d give a cool hundred if I was in his shoes. You bet your sweet life I would! Don’t you git to worryin’ about society’s gates, Em. They wa’n’t never so wide open to him as they be now. Ain’t he in the public eye? Ain’t he? Well, I guess yes—right up in the limelight! Ever stop to think what that means? Why, it’s credit, it’s friends, it’s business. It’d mean sales to me—only I ain’t got it. I’m one er them fellers that Fortune seldom winks at—and if she did I’d feel like payin’ her fifty per cent for her trouble.”
She shook her head disconsolately.
“You needn’t worry a mite about Lamont now,” he continued. “He’s on the right railroad tack. He’s flyin’ along the Grand Trunk line to success, and if I ain’t mistook, he’s passin’ small stations without even ringin’ his bell.”