Shelby grinned.
"That's the situation's one humorous phase," said he. "The two things will neutralize one another's effect,—like Kilkenny cats, you know. He'll not dare raise a row about the votes for fear of lending color to the scandal."
But Mrs. Hilliard, whose sense of humor was sluggish this morning, rejoined bitterly;—
"The row will fall to me."
"He needn't know your part in this—the matter of the votes; and as for the other thing—well, after all, he is your husband, hard and fast, and you'd best try and patch things up."
She straightened, flashing him a stony look, and he braced himself for a hurricane; but to his equal discomfiture she went down beside the shaft in a passionate fit of weeping.
"I should be under here," she sobbed; "I should be under here."
Shelby, tingling to be gone, shifted from foot to foot, and offered some blundering solace which she put away.
"You've ceased to care," she accused.
He protested, adding indiscreetly that she had done too much for him for that.