"Where is your mistress?" he asked, quietly.
It was the question for which Mary, and the whole household, had been waiting.
"Why, sir," she answered falteringly, dismayed now that the matter was coming to a crisis, "she has gone out—with Miss Nell, sir—and with Mr. McGrew."
McGrew! The name roared in Jim's brain. The man who had insulted his wife, whom he had beaten and driven from his home like a whipped cur.... And Lou and Nell had gone with Dan McGrew. He felt a sickness, inexpressibly more horrible than the physical nausea that had sickened him there in Murphy's saloon. That Lou should have gone with Dan McGrew—and Nell! The thing was incredible!
His eyes searched the room, as if looking for wife or child, or for some clew to explain the mystery. They fell on the envelope, which he still held in his hand. He tore it open in a frenzy of eagerness.
He read confusedly. But, somehow, the essential meaning beat upon his brain. He grasped the fact that the woman he loved had gone from him. It was all a monstrous lie, of course. Yet, there was the horrid truth—she had gone away. Lou and Nell—the two things in the world—had gone away. He could not understand. But they had gone.
"Good-by, Jim!"
She had written that, and she had signed it "Lou." There was confusion in his thoughts. He could not guess the meaning that lay back of what his wife had written. He only knew that there was some monstrous lie.
The maid's voice came softly. The girl was appalled at the expression on the man's face as he stood staring down at the sheet of paper in his hands. It was from a desire to bring things back to the ordinary that she spoke apologetically:
"Your glass of water, sir."