The Doctor’s face grew stern, and Lola looked both shocked and distressed.
“John!” she exclaimed in dismay, for she liked young Fenway, and more than either of the others knew that, if this thing were true, he had done his best to deceive her.
“He married a telephone girl in one of the big hotels,” went on John, anxious to get the unpleasant story over, for he had a man’s feeling of loyalty to his sex, and hated to be placed in the position of a tale bearer.
“He has been trying ever since to get a divorce, but she won’t let him. It isn’t a thing a fellow likes to talk about, but it’s true.”
“Thank you,” said the Doctor gravely; “my home is not large enough to hold that sort of man. I shall tell him so if he calls again.”
“I am sorry, very sorry,” said Lola. “There was something about him I always liked, and it hurts me to think that he tried to deceive me as he did.”
“Bah!” protested the Doctor. “The world is full of men like that, but once you know them, they are harmless. Don’t look sad, my dear; it is so easy to forget all about him.”
It was not so easy, however, for Lola to forget Dick Fenway’s deceit as her father fancied. Only a few weeks before he had told her that he loved her, and when she had gently refused him he had shown such bitter disappointment that she had been quite touched, and had ever since done her best to be kind to him. Now the thought that at the time he had spoken of his love for her he had had a wife filled her with amazement. Lola knew little of the evil of the world, but she felt that here there was something wrong, and it disturbed her. Long after John had gone to his business, and her father had left to meet his old friend, Doctor Crossett, she sat thinking it over, and the more she thought the more distressed she became.
Dick Fenway had been brought to the house by a friend of John’s, and from the first she had been attracted by his gayety and recklessness. He was a great contrast to the men she had known. Careless, rich and happy, and there was something about the young man that had made a strong appeal to the maternal feeling that is in every woman, however young or unworldly she may be. Fenway’s habit of depending upon her for advice, his very confession of careless helplessness, had put him somewhat in the position of a child whom she felt it her duty to help with advice and counsel.
At first, when a little later Maria told her that he was waiting for her in the front room, she decided not to go to him, but, on second thought, she changed her mind, and thinking it best to have the whole matter definitely settled, she entered the room gravely, perhaps a little sadly.