"What a dance she has led her poor husband!" Mrs. Whitcomb said. "And my poor Sammy fell into her trap, too."
Ashton, zealous comforter, took a wrathful tone: "I always thought your husband was the most unmitigated——" But Mrs. Whitcomb bridled at once. "How dare you criticize Sammy! He's the nicest boy in the world."
Ashton recovered quickly. "That's what I started to say. Will he contest the—divorce?"
"Of course not," she beamed. "The dear fellow would never deny me anything. Sammy offered to get it himself, but I told him he'd better stay in Chicago and stick to business. I shall need such a lot of alimony."
"Too bad he couldn't have come along," Ashton insinuated.
But the irony was wasted, for she sighed: "Yes, I shall miss him terribly. But we feared that if he were with me it might hamper me in getting a divorce on the ground of desertion."
She was trying to look earnest and thoughtful and heartbroken, but the result was hardly plausible, for Mrs. Sammy Whitcomb could not possibly have been really earnest or really thoughtful; and her heart was quite too elastic to break. She proved it instantly, for when she heard behind her the voice of a young man asking her to let him pass, she turned to protest, but seeing that he was a handsome young man, her starch was instantly changed to sugar. And she rewarded his good looks with a smile, as he rewarded hers with another.
Then Ashton intervened like a dog in the manger and dragged her off to her seat, leaving the young man to exclaim:
"Some tamarind, that!"
Another young man behind him growled: "Cut out the tamarinds and get to business. Mallory will be here any minute."