"You might try Atlantic City, sir," she suggested blandly; "it's quite possible that they went there."
At this, Challoner looked ugly, and seizing her roughly by the arm, he led her to her mistress' boudoir, where, pointing to a Verne-Martin cabinet that stood in a corner, he exclaimed:—
"Who put him there?"
For answer the girl shrugged her shoulders. She made no attempt to disengage herself from his grasp, merely watched Challoner as his gaze rested angrily on a plain gold frame in which was an unconventional half-length photograph—Colonel Richard Hargraves, his arms akimbo upon a table, his shoulders forward, his smug, full, self-satisfied face thrust into the face of the world—of Challoner.
Even on paper Hargraves's lazy eyes seemed to insult and tantalise him, and an insane desire to crush, batter and destroy this counterfeit presentment came over him. For an instant he had a vague sensation of suffocation, almost to choking, and releasing the girl, his hand sought his throat; it encountered a scarf-pin—a trifle that his wife had given him long ago. Tearing it quickly from his scarf, he extended it toward the maid.
"That may fetch the truth from her," he said to himself, and aloud: "Tell me where Letty is, and ... no"—the girl was reaching for the jewel, but he held it from her—"no, tell me first," he added hoarsely, toying with the pin.
"Well, then, if you must know, sir," she stammered, "she went to Gravesend—the races, sir."
Challoner's mind received this information with a certain morbid exultation; and thrusting his face into hers and pointing with the pin to the portrait, he cried:—
"Then she is with him?"
The girl was silent; she was figuring the value of the pin. It was worth fifty dollars, she finally decided, and looking up at Challoner, admitted the truth with a nod.