"Don't know! Don't you know anything, or don't you care? I must find him. He—he maybe wearing handcuffs in prison now!"
Ted Lancaster put up his hand and rubbed his nose.
For the first time she noticed his coat. It was a pretty coat—a loose, silk smoking-jacket—but in some unaccountable way it was, to her, the last stroke. All her pent-up nervousness, her quivering impatience, suddenly culminated in wild wrath against the wearer of that coat.
"Oh!" she cried, her soft voice low and passionate. "It is all your fault! You invite him here—you suggest this hateful lottery business. What do you care? You make him gamble—but it doesn't hurt you. You don't need money—you aren't led on by the hope of winning a great heap of money. You only dabble in it. It doesn't matter to you whether you win or lose. And you don't care if he loses! Why should you? You don't care if he gets into trouble—if he's taken to prison! Oh, no, you're safe, so what does anything matter? And now he has gone—gone somewhere to make money, and I—I can't find him. He is so careless—he would laugh at the idea of a policeman coming after him. It's all a joke to you—I expect," her voice suddenly lost all its fire; "you are laughing at me now—"
"I'm not! I'm not a cad, whatever else I may be!"
She glanced at him, vaguely surprised. His face had lost its ruefulness, its uncomfortableness. He looked suddenly older and grimmer; his eyes stared at her angrily from beneath frowning brows.
She turned to the door.
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know—to find him."
In a few strides he was before her.