“What clothes do you suppose they are but my own?—though I haven't had a chance to wear them much lately!” she countered crisply.
He scowled at her speculatively.
“What are you doing with them out here in this hole, then?” he demanded.
“I had to wear them last night, hadn't I?” she retorted. “I'd have looked well coming out of Gypsy Nan's garret dressed as myself if any one had seen me!” She scowled at him in turn. She was beginning to believe that he had not even an inkling of her identity. Her safest play was to stake everything on that belief. “Say, what's the matter with you?” she inquired disdainfully. “I came out here and changed last night; and I changed into these rags I'm wearing now when I got back again; and I left my own clothes here because I was expecting to get word that I could put them on again soon for keeps—though I might have known from past experience that something would queer the fine promises you made at Matty's last night! And the reason I'm out here now is because I left some things in the pocket, amongst them”—she stared at him mockingly—“my marriage certificate.”
Danglar's face blackened.
“Curse you!” he burst out angrily. “When you get your tantrums on, you've got a tongue, haven't you! You'd have been wearing your clothes now, if you'd have done as you were told. You're the one that queered things last night.” His voice was rising; he was rocking even more unsteadily upon his feet. “Why in hell weren't you at the Silver Sphinx?”
Rhoda Gray squinted at him through Gypsy Nan's spectacles. She knew an hysterical impulse to laugh outright in the sure consciousness of supremacy over him now. The man had been drinking. He was by no means drunk; but, on the other hand, he was by no means sober—and she was certain now that, though she did not know how he had found her here in the shed, not the slightest suspicion of her had entered his mind.
“I was at the Silver Sphinx,” she announced coolly.
“You lie!” he said hoarsely. “You weren't! I told you to be there at eleven, and you weren't. You lie! What are you lying to me for—eh? I'll find out, you—you—”
Rhoda Gray dashed the clothes down on the floor at her feet, and faced the man as though suddenly overcome in turn herself with passion, shaking both closed fists at him.