Suddenly he heard her voice. “Do you find it so easy to give up our friendship?” she asked.
“I didn’t think about it’s being easy or hard,” he answered. “I simply thought of protecting you.”
“And do you think that my friends are nothing to me?” she demanded. “Have I so very many as that?” And she clenched her hands with a sudden passionate gesture. “Do you think that I will let those wretches frighten me into doing what they want? I’ll not give in to them—not for anything that Lelia can do!”
A look of perplexity crossed Montague’s face. “Lelia?” he asked.
“Mrs. Robbie Walling!” she cried. “Don’t you suppose that she is responsible for that paragraph?”
Montague started.
“That’s the way they fight their battles!” cried Mrs. Winnie. “They pay money to those scoundrels to be protected. And then they send nasty gossip about people they wish to injure.”
“You don’t mean that!” exclaimed the man.
“Of course I do,” cried she. “I know that it’s true! I know that Robbie Walling paid fifteen thousand dollars for some trumpery volumes that they got out! And how do you suppose the paper gets its gossip?”
“I didn’t know,” said Montague. “But I never dreamed—”