But she saw that he was both nervous and apprehensive, and she knew that the inference she and Cherry had drawn from the letter was a true one.
"Does Cherry know anything of this?" Martin presently muttered.
"Do you want her to?" Alix asked, pointedly.
He shrugged his shoulders with a great assumption of indifference.
"If she wants to have it all dragged to light, why, she can go ahead!" he remarked, carelessly. "I've left Red Creek, and--as I tell you!--that woman will never write another letter, for I know the way to shut her up, and I intend to do it. But if you and Cherry want the whole thing aired in public, why, go ahead! I'm not stopping you!"
"At least I think you ought to let Cherry lead her own life after this!" Alix countered with spirit.
"Live in your old house, eh?" he asked, resentfully, as he flipped the pages of his program with a big thumb and stared at it with unseeing eyes. "What does she want to live there for?"
"The fact remains that she DOES," Alix persisted.
"Yes, and have just as good a time as if she never had been married at all!" he said.
"You KNOW--"