"HARMON!" At the swift call he looked back at her. "Harmon! Has anything happened?"
His answer was an evasion, and she knew it. "I'm staying home to see some men. That's all."
But the moment's fear was too stressful to be so easily set at rest. "Wait—do you hear?" She slipped from the bed, and, with her eyes still fastened on him she groped about till she found her down slippers. Willoughby had slowly opened the door, but his wife angrily reached over his shoulder and pushed it shut. "You SHALL tell me!" she insisted, fiercely determined. "I want to know what's happened."
Willoughby shook off her hand, and renewed his effort at the door. "I've nothing to tell you," he rumbled sullenly; and then—"What do you want to know for?"
She caught her breath, certain now of the fear that shook her like an ague. He was in trouble, and trouble, to her, meant but the one thing—a money trouble. It was the first time in her years of placid, self-possessed vanity that any terror like this had come to jar her. To lose it now—this bought and paid-for complacency, this counterpart of happiness, struck her to the heart with a keener, more convincingly human emotion than she had known for many a day in her negligent, shallow existence.
"You want to know?" he answered, and smiled at her in grim, accusing mockery. "All right, then; I'll tell you. You'd better be ready for it, too." In his brutality there was a guarded note of self-pity, as if to see her suffer would somehow rejoice him in his own trouble. "Well, I'm smashed up—that's all. I'm ruined!"
Mrs. Willoughby, shrinking away, laid a hand on her lips and stared with distended eyes. "RUINED?" she gasped, unable to believe him—incredulously, as if at some barbaric jest. "Ruined?" She had turned quite white. "Oh," she cried, wetting her lips, "does it mean there is nothing left? How did it happen? Oh, it can't be true!"
"How did it happen?" Willoughby had thrust both hands into his pockets, and his head was turned sideways, as if the better to study the depths of her emotion. "Oh, the usual way—flying too many kites, I suppose. Poor?" he growled savagely. "Yes; we're poor as Job's turkey! They've cleaned me out of everything—their——Teton Sisters, too!"
In her mind's bewilderment of distress she caught at the name; it was the property in which Severance had lost his money; and she recalled ugly rumors that, before, had not affected her. Now that his money was gone, they attached to themselves a newer significance, accusing and indefensible. "The Teton Sisters! What do you mean?" For was the shame of losing his wealth to be coupled with the shameful admission that he had taken a hand in gouging her former suitor? It was singular she hadn't thought of it before; now it struck home with redoubled poignancy.
"Mean, hey? I mean they've got it away from me—Mills and that fellow Severance. It was the prettiest thing I owned, too," he groaned, careless of what he was saying, and blurting out the acknowledgment. "But that ain't the worst—no, not by a long chalk! Do you know what they're going to do?" he demanded, hoarsely, and with an almost weeping resentment, yet as if glad to find some one to whom to pour it out. "They're going to sue for the money, too!"