Mrs. Willoughby gave her gloves a disdainful, careless twirl, and went on her way to her room. To her astonishment, a few moments later, she heard the front door slam. Willoughby had gone out.
He was away for nearly a week; and when he returned, his eyes were heavy and blood-shot, his face was pallid and wearily drawn.
"Well, so you are back. What have you been doing?" Mrs. Willoughby asked, perfunctorily. Though it was late in the morning she was still in bed, sitting up in a dressing sack, and turning the pages of a weekly publication that dealt in news of local high life. Its chief item, to-day, was the announcement of a dance she was to give shortly—at the club, as usual—and she had just finished for the second time the commentator's glib and unctuous phrasing.
He answered evasively, "Oh, just away on business." As he walked to the window and looked out, she carelessly turned the pages. "Stella, what did you do for the boy's birthday?" he asked, slowly pacing back to the foot of the bed.
She turned another page. "The boy? Oh, I gave him some money, and sent him down-town with the coachman. I was too busy." Smiling lightly, she went on glancing through the paper. "I suspect he stuffed himself on candy."
But there was no answering smile on Willoughby's face. "On candy?
How much did you give him?"
Without looking up, she answered as lightly as before. "Oh, I can't remember now. Let me think." Then she vaguely named an amount, and Willoughby pressed his lips together.
"Stella," he said slowly, after a moment's darkening of his eyes, "do you know that amounts to a week's salary of more than one of my clerks? Don't you think it was a great deal to give a boy?"
She looked up now, astonished—a little vexed, too; for this was the second time he had questioned her use of money. "Well, what of it? It seems of little consequence." She buried her face in the paper again after this shot, and Willoughby stared at her.
"No," he murmured, reflectively, an alarming bitterness in his voice; "nothing seems of any consequence."