Clara followed her down stairs. “Well, I shall never do it in the world,” she said, with reviving hope in her voice.
“Oh, I don't expect you to go to him this morning,” said Olive dryly. “That would be a little too barefaced.”
Her friend kissed, her. “Olive Halleck, you're the strangest girl that ever was. I do believe you'd joke at the point of death! But I'm so glad you have been perfectly frank with me, and of course it's worth worlds to know that you think I've behaved horridly, and ought to make some reparation.”
“I'm glad you value my opinion, Clara. And if you come to me for frankness, you can always have all you want; it's a drug in the market with me.” She meagrely returned Clara's embrace, and left her in a reverie of tactless scheming for the restoration of peace with Mr. Atherton.
Marcia came in upon the lawyer before he had thought, after parting with Miss Kingsbury, to tell the clerk in the outer office to deny him; but she was too full of her own trouble to see the reluctance which it tasked all his strength to quell, and she sank into the nearest chair unbidden. At sight of her, Atherton became the prey of one of those fantastic repulsions in which men visit upon women the blame of others' thoughts about them: he censured her for Halleck's wrong; but in another instant he recognized his cruelty, and atoned by relenting a little in his intolerance of her presence. She sat gazing at him with a face of blank misery, to which he could not refuse the charity of a prompting question: “Is there something I can do for you, Mrs. Hubbard?”
“Oh, I don't know,—I don't know!” She had a folded paper in her hands, which lay helpless in her lap. After a moment she resumed, in a hoarse, low voice: “They have all begun to come for their money, and this one—this one says he will have the law of me—I don't know what he means—if I don't pay him.”
Marcia could not know how hard Atherton found it to govern the professional suspicion which sprung up at the question of money. But he overruled his suspicion by an effort that was another relief to the struggle in which he was wrenching his mind from Miss Kingsbury's outrageous behavior. “What have you got there?” he asked gravely, and not unkindly, and being used to prompt the reluctance of lady clients, he put out his hand for the paper she held. It was the bill of the threatening creditor, for indefinitely repeated dozens of tivoli beer.
“Why do they come to you with this?”
“Mr. Hubbard is away.”
“Oh, yes. I heard. When do you expect him home?”