“Lots of people have. And you call it a ‘rumored scandal’ all you want; everybody believes it. She owns him body and soul.”
The other man had at last induced the tip of his cigar to catch. He threw back his head and drew a few quick inspirations.
“That’s the story. But a woman like Mrs. Davenport is not going to damn her daughter’s friend on hearsay. Women have got a creed of their own; they believe what they want to and they disbelieve what they want to. She wants to believe that the affair’s purely platonic, and she does it.”
“But Barclay! To hang round her that way in public—what a fool!”
“Oh, Barclay!”—a shrug went with the words—“he does what he’s told!”
The man turned as he spoke and saw the two girls above him on the step. He threw a low-toned phrase at his companion, and without more words they started out and were absorbed in the darkness. Almost simultaneously a carriage rattled up and the Colonel’s voice bade June and Rosamund descend.
A half-hour later, as they were mounting the stairs to their rooms, June said suddenly,
“Did you hear what those men were saying on the steps as we stood there waiting?”
They had both heard the entire conversation, and though they did not understand the true purport of the ambiguous phrases, they realized that they contained a veiled censure of Mrs. Newbury and Jerry Barclay. Their secluded bringing up in an impoverished home where the coarseness of the world never entered had kept them ignorant of the winked-at sins of society. Yet the crude frankness of mining camps had paraded before their eyes many things that girls brought up in the respectable areas of large cities never see.
“Yes, I heard them,” said Rosamund.