Mr. Ford was nodding his head. "So it would," he said. "Yes, so it would." He stopped nodding, and sat there an instant, as if he were thinking of something else. "If that's the case," he broke out, "what a rotter, by Jove! that woman was!"
"Rotter, I think," said Mr. Burke, "was precisely the word I used."
And Bessie Lonsdale listened for the second time that day while two voices, now, instead of one, were lifted in excoriation of some woman who seemed to grow, as they talked, only a shade less real than herself.
She had again the sensation of the words beating upon her like blows which she was powerless to resist. She lost, as one does in physical pain, all sense of time....
"However," Mr. Ford brought down his hand with a kind of judicial finality, "if Mrs. Lonsdale will come on down with us now—the storm seems to have slackened—we'll see what can be done." He turned in his chair as if he were preparing to rise.
At the movement Bessie Lonsdale seemed to grow rigid in her chair.
"Wait."
Mr. Burke and Mr. Ford turned, startled by the strangeness of her tone. They waited for her to speak.
"I can't go."
"Can't go?" They echoed it together. "Why not?"