Can what he has read be true? Has the girl whom he has married, against his will, as it were, made a laughing-stock of him in the eyes of every man and woman in Newport? Dared she do it?
He goes out into the hall once more, and is just in time to see his wife's French maid returning from breakfast. He pushes past the girl, and strides into the inner apartment.
Sally is sitting by the window in a pale-blue silk wrapper wonderfully trimmed with billows of rare lace, baby blue ribbons and jeweled buckles, her yellow hair falling down over her shoulders in a rippling mass of tangled curls.
Jay Gardiner does not stop to admire the pretty picture she makes, but steps across the floor to where she sits.
"Mrs. Gardiner," he cries, hoarsely, "if you have the time to listen to me, I should like a few words with you here and now."
Sally's guilty heart leaps up into her throat.
How much has he discovered of what happened last night? Does he know all?
He is standing before her with flushed face and flashing eyes. She cowers from him, and if guilt was ever stamped on a woman's face, it is stamped on hers at that instant. If her life had depended upon it, she could not have uttered a word.
"Read that!" he cried, thrusting the open letter into her hand—"read that, and answer me, are those charges false or true?"
For an instant her face had blanched white as death, but in the next she had recovered something of her usual bravado and daring. That heavy hand upon her shoulder seemed to give her new life.