“I doubt it!” said Joe, bitterly, adding in helpless indignation as he again faced his wife: “Can you imagine any reasonably intelligent girl turning down good old Jim for a flossy millionaire?”
“Well, money sometimes dazzles a girl, especially young and very pretty ones like Clara,” returned Mabel, judicially. “I tell you what let’s do, Joe. I know it would be lovely to have our first dinner alone to-night, but don’t you think we might include Jim? It might cheer him up.”
“It would be an act of charity,” agreed Joe. “Jim is pretty low in his mind these days. I’m sure he guesses there is something wrong.”
But in spite of their whole-souled attempt to give Jim a good time that night, both Joe and Mabel felt that they had failed. Jim tried to rouse himself and meet their fun with some of his own, but nothing could disguise the fact that his heart was not in it.
He asked one or two listless questions about Clara, almost, Mabel thought, as though from a sense of duty, and after that maintained a dead silence on the subject they both knew was uppermost in his mind.
They had dined in a jolly restaurant full of lights and music, but despite the hilarity all about them, their party had been a dismal failure. They were glad when the last course was over and they could leave the place.
It was when they had reached the hotel and Mabel had slipped into another room to remove her hat and cloak that Joe turned to his chum with a casual question.
“Got your letter from Clara all right this week, did you?” he asked, in a tone that was not quite natural.
Jim looked at him, surprised, then turned away before he answered shortly:
“Not yet.”