"I never pry into other people's affairs. You are the last person I expected to see this night."
"Will you answer a single question? I promise not to intrude further upon your time, which, doubtless, is very valuable. Have you either the hat or the letter?"
"Neither. I knew nothing about any letter till Mr. Chittenden came. But he came too late."
"Too late?"—in an agonized whisper.
"Yes, too late. I had, unfortunately, given his hat to another gentleman who made a trifling mistake in thinking it to be his own." Suddenly my manners returned to me. "Will you come in?"
"Come in? No! You have given the hat to another man? A trifling mistake! He calls it a trifling mistake!"—addressing the heavens, obscured though they were by the thickness of several ceilings. "Oh, what shall I do?" She began to wring her hands, and when a woman does that what earthly hope is there for the man who looks on?
"Don't do that!" I implored. "I'll find the hat." At a word from her, for all she had trampled on me, I would gladly have gone to Honolulu in search of a hat-pin. "The gentleman left me his card. With your permission I will go at once in search of him."
"I have a cab outside. Give me the address."
"I refuse to permit you to go alone."
"You have absolutely nothing to say in regard to where I shall or shall not go."