"I think we have said all there is to say on this subject," Lallie said coldly. "I really would rather not hear any more."
She crossed the room and held the door open, and in silence Mrs. Atwood passed through it.
Lallie seized her coat and hat, fiercely stabbed in her big pins and ran down stairs to the drawing-room, where she knew Sidney Ballinger would be waiting.
So he was, and Mrs. Atwood was with him. The tears were running down her cheeks. He was white and evidently very angry. His mouth, usually so weak and amiable, had taken on a cruel look--the sort of snarl that curls the lips back from the teeth as in an angry animal.
Lallie stopped short and looked from one to the other.
"I have told her, Sidney," sobbed Mrs. Atwood. "I thought it only right that she should know all we had been to one another--how greatly we loved, how----"
He turned upon her furiously.
"I never loved you. From its first inception the whole thing was false and pretentious, as you are yourself. I was only a boy when you got hold of me. I never really cared for you."
Lallie moved a little nearer Mrs. Atwood.
"Believe me, Lallie," he went on, "I never cared for her, and now she won't leave me alone. I care more for your very shoe-lace----"