Carrie, seeing Mrs. Annersly look up sharply, controlled herself by force of will.
"Would you mind telling me why you think that?" she asked calmly.
Mrs. Custer appeared to be looking at her in astonishment. "You don't know? He hasn't told you that, either?"
"No," said Carrie quietly, "he certainly hasn't."
The woman in the big chair sat silent for several moments, and then made a little deprecatory gesture. "Even if your husband doesn't thank me for telling you, I think you ought to know. It appears from what Tom heard, two or three of the loungers at the hotel were talking about you. Charley came into the verandah and heard them."
"Ah," said Carrie, with a sharpness in her voice that suggested pain, "so that was how it came about. No doubt half the people in the settlement know what they were saying?"
Once more Mrs. Custer appeared to consider. Like most of his friends, she believed in Charley Leland, and it was, of course, not astonishing that she was aware that his relations with his wife were not exactly all they should be. This to some extent roused her resentment, and, though she was inclined to like Carrie, she had half-consciously taken up her husband's cause against her.
"My dear," she said, "I scarcely think I could tell you, and I really don't believe many people know. Still, neither your husband nor the others appear to have noticed that the inner door of the room was open, and the man who keeps the hotel heard them. He told Tom that he wouldn't have expected anything else from Charley Leland."
Carrie leant forward a little in her chair. "I want you to tell me exactly what they said. It is right to my husband and myself that I should know."
"Then you will forgive me if it hurts you. They said you had only married him for his money, and he was no more to you than one of the teamsters. There was a little more I couldn't mention."