“Not if I told you I advised her to go?” 177
“You!” In astonishment complete the girl stared. “You advised her to go?”
“Yes, the same day I made Randall the loan. It was really a coincidence. I wondered they didn’t meet in the elevator.”
“A lawyer in a little town like this, with several departments in his business, comes in contact with a variety of things,” he commented after a moment.
“Tell me about Margery.” The girl seemed to have heard that suggestion only. “I can’t understand, can’t believe—really.”
For a moment Roberts was silent. There was no banter in his manner when he looked up at last.
“I didn’t tell you this merely to gossip,” he said slowly; “I think you appreciate that without my saying it; but somehow I felt that you ought to know—that if any one could do any good there it is you. I never met either of them before, that’s another coincidence; but from what you’ve told me and the little I saw of them both that day, I felt dead sorry. Besides, life’s so short, and I hate—divorce.”
“You can’t mean it has come to that?”
“It hadn’t come, but it was coming fast. 178 She visited me first. From there she was going straight to her father—to stay.”
“It’s horrible, simply horrible—and so unjustified! You induced her, though, to go to Chicago instead?”