Nevius had been standing, but at this statement he dropped into a chair and covered his eyes.
In a musing, contemplative way the lady gazed at him, and presently, with a sort inquiring defiance, she added—
“Of course you won’t contest it.”
Nevius looked up. There was such bewilderment in his expression that the lady grew bolder.
“The lawyers say that it is a clear case,” she announced a little loftily.
“A clear case of what? Do tell me what you mean.”
“Hilda wrote to you I am sure.”
“Hilda wrote nothing. She told me that an affair of mine had come out. That she was a brokenhearted woman because of it. The instant I got her letter I started to come here. If I have not got here sooner, it’s through no fault of mine. But I cabled her; didn’t she get it?”
Mrs. Snaith shrugged her shoulders.
“It’s all very well to send cablegrams from London. What you ought to have done was to have behaved yourself in New York. And it’s all very well for you to look at me that way. You know better than anyone. It took Hilda a long time before she could believe such a thing possible of either of you. But I knew what kind of a creature she was the first time I set eyes on her.”
“But can’t you tell me,” Nevius cried, “can’t you tell me whom you mean?”
Mrs. Snaith’s thin lips filled with abundant scorn.
“Why, your mistress, of course, that Adulam girl—”
Nevius was on his feet by this time, the expression in his face was not pleasant to behold, he was quite white beside; and when he confronted the lady, as he instantly did, his voice was not wholly assured.
“I have never contradicted a woman in my life, never to my knowledge have I been uncivil to one, but—”
He hesitated, and with a gasp which must have been the escape of rage compressed, abruptly he mastered himself.
“Nor will I begin with you.”
There was a bell on the table, he turned and touched it.
“But it is my duty to Miss Adulam to say—”
A servant appeared, and interrupting himself, he addressed her.
“Tell Mr. Snaith I wish to see him.” And as the servant disappeared he added:
“It is my duty to her to say that your accusation would be monstrous were it not absurd.”
The lady smiled stealthily. Such a remark could be treated with disdain. And, smiling, left the room.
Nevius neither saw nor heeded. He stood, his head bowed, his hands behind his back, till there came a shuffle of feet in the hall, and an obese dwarf with an erysipeliptic skin halted in the doorway.
“Well? What do you want? I’ll teach you to cut me in the street.”
Nevius reached for his hat and put it on.
“Your wife has charged Miss Adulam—”
“My wife? My wife isn’t in the habit of making charges—”
“Permit me, you are wrong, she is. It is not so long ago she hired a parcel of detectives to manufacture evidence against Montrion, and if Mrs. Montrion didn’t use it, it was only because, as she told me herself, she was afraid Montrion would shoot her.”
“It’s a lie.”
“What your wife says in regard to Miss Adulam may be so described. She knows it and so do you. What Hilda thinks I have yet to learn.”
“If you don’t know already, more fool you. If you have come here with any intention of contesting this suit, you might as well go back. The lawyers have daughters of their own and they say they’ll make an example of you.”
“Ah! you may tell them from me that I will contest it until the last armed court of appeal expires—which I suppose is just what they want.”
“By God then, if you do, I’ll ruin you.”
“And you may say, too, that I shall be at the Brevoort until I can get into my own house, and meanwhile whenever they take a fancy to serve the summons—”
“You’ve been served,” the dwarf shouted. “You’ve been served by publication. When I employ lawyers I get my money’s worth. The papers are full of it.”
Nevius ripped a glove in two.
“Do you mean that you have got Miss Adulam’s name in connection with mine?”
In his voice were such angers, in his bearing such threats, that the dwarf wheeled like a rat surprised.
“Then you ought to be trampled under foot,” Nevius gnashed, and striding after him cried, “In Hebrew there are four words for reptile, in my vocabulary there is but one—Snaith.”
The old man squirmed to the stairs, shrieking obscenities, fearful of attack.
But the front door opened and closed. Nevius had gone.
X
“Carol, this is the saddest thing that ever happened to me.”
On reaching the hotel, Nevius, after securing rooms, had sent for the papers. On the first page of the one he first examined was his name in leaded type, and beneath it, written in that reporter spirit which stops not even at a column, was an account of the last sensation, the petition of Mrs. Carol Nevius for divorce on the ground of her husband’s adultery with Janet Adulam and Gertrude Vührer. Though he had eaten nothing since noon, he sickened as he read, and was obliged to put the page down. The remainder of the article declared that after a painful scene at his house he had confessed his misconduct and fled abroad. The other papers contained articles of similar tenor, though one, more enterprising perhaps, stated that the correspondents were the housemaid and the cook.
An hour passed before Nevius could hold a pen, then he had sent a message to Jones, and now, as the novelist, cloaked in an Inverness, the white of his neckcloth just visible, entered the room, there was no cynicism in his voice, a sympathy merely, abiding and sincere.
“The saddest,” he repeated with just a glance at where the papers lay. “If there are words of consolation I do not know them.”
“It is hideous,” Nevius muttered. “I don’t wonder you advised me to remain where I was—”
“Did I suppose—could
