"Hire another nigger an' pay 'em somethin', so's they won't quit without notice, then," suggested the girl, unfeelingly.
"How you know this feller's Milly Champneys's husband?" asked Mr. Baxter. "Who's to prove it?"
Nancy looked at him and laughed. But Milly Champneys's husband said hastily: "Let us go, for God's sake! If there's a telephone here, ring for a cab or a taxi. How soon can you be ready?"
"I can walk out bag and baggage in ten minutes," she replied, and darted from the room.
The South Carolina Don Quixote looked at the sordid, angry pair before him. He felt like one in an evil dream, a dream that degraded him, and Milly's memory, and Milly's niece.
"If you wish to make any inquiries, I shall be at the Palace Hotel until this evening," he told them. "And—would a hundred dollars soothe your feelings?"
The woman's eyes slitted; the man's bulged.
"You musta come by money since Milly died," said Mrs. Baxter. "Yes, sure we'll take the hundred. We ain't refusin' money. It's little enough, too, considerin' all I done for that girl!"
Mr. Champneys counted out ten crisp bills into the greedy hand, and the three waited silently until Nancy appeared. Champneys almost screamed at sight of her. His heart sank like lead, and the task he had set for himself of a sudden assumed monumental proportions.
"I ain't took nothin' out of this house but the few things belongin' to my mother. You're welcome to the rest," she told the woman, briefly. The man she ignored altogether.