"You don't, eh?" Edith Newton mumbled a mouthful of pins. "You are slow, Maud."
"No—only lazy. Why should I puzzle over things when you are here? I'll bet you have pumped everybody dry long ago. Now—dispense!"
"I don't go round with my eyes shut," the other calmly answered. "To begin: Calvert Molyneux is completely gone on little Carter, whose husband, it seems, left her because of some slight."
"Hum!" Mrs. Jack elevated her straight brows. "Foolish man to leave her to Calvert. So that is why he went home! Exits till the tarnished pearl be regulped by the conjugal oyster? Clever!"
"On the contrary"—she curled a full red lip—"he contemplates honorable marriage—dalliance, Dakota, divorce, everything that begins with D, down to eventual desertion, if I know anything of Calvert. But fancy—HE!"
"'The devil in love, the devil a husband would be,'" Mrs. Jack misquoted.
"'The devil married, the devil a husband was he,'" Edith Newton finished. "But he is not married yet. She holds him off—foolishly. For you know Calvert, good in streaks, but ruled by his emotions and ruthless when they command. If she turns him down—"
"She'll need to keep him at longer distance than this house affords. But Elinor?—this doesn't explain her. She's beastly selfish under her jolly little skin. Why is she posing as aid and advocate of love?"
"In love with Carter hubby—or was would be more correct, in view of her carryings-on with Sinclair. But the Carter attack, I understand, was very severe while it lasted. Think of it, Maud, Elinor to fall in love with a settler!"
Mrs. Jack elevated naked shoulders. "Not at all surprising. Just the itch of her rotten blood for a few sound corpuscles. I've felt it myself at times. Don't look so shocked—you know we are rotten."