“No, no! It’s just a little headache from the sun. Any news, grandpa?”
The colonel, outside the closed door, stood with his hand at his chin, thinking.
“Not much, Jinny. I ’phoned everything I could, didn’t I? Dan made a great figure at the trial, and Leigh’s home now—I reckon Mrs. Carter’s got him packed in cotton-batting by this time. There’s one thing—I saw myself——” He hesitated, listening, but there was no interrogation from the other side of the door. “I saw William Carter ignore his wife in open court—after the verdict. It—well, Jinny, it stuck in my throat.”
There was a significant silence. He heard the slight stir of some one in the room; he thought that Virginia had been lying down and had suddenly sat up.
“I don’t think it was just right,” she said at last, in a faint voice. “He was here this afternoon, and he told me—he says she’s left him for good.”
The colonel, outside the door, gritted his teeth a moment in silence, very red in the face.
“The lummox!” he muttered under his breath at last.
“What did you say, grandpa?”
“I didn’t say anything, Jinny. I only thought something. I thought something not quite polite.”
“Oh!”