"I do not know," she answered. "Mrs. Mortomley does not say, and I have not an idea unless they have returned to Homewood. Mrs. Mortomley unfortunately understood Mr. Werner objected to my having invited her and her husband here, and she hastened to leave a house where their presence was unwelcome."
Having unburdened herself of which statement, Mrs. Werner gathered up her ample skirt, and with a distant bow to both gentlemen left the room.
Mr. Werner went after her.
"Leonora," he said as she ascended the staircase, but she never answered him. "Leonora," he repeated, but still she made no more sign than if she had been deaf.
Then following rapidly, he stood beside her on the landing.
"Leonora," he entreated, laying his hand on her arm with a pleading gentleness difficult to associate with Henry Werner.
She stood quite still and looked at him with an expression he had never seen on her face before through all their married life, which God pity any man who ever sees it in the face of his wife, in the face of the mother of his children.
"Do not speak to me about them to-night," she said. "Hereafter perhaps, but not now," and her voice was changed and hard as Dolly had heard it.
"Will you give me her note?" he asked.
"Yes, it is your right," and she gave him the paper she held crushed in her hand, a paper on which Dolly had traced mad words in wonderful hieroglyphics.