Part 28 (1/2)
”You mean, am I having an affair with her?”
She hung her head, but managed to make a slight nod of a.s.sent.
He laughed. ”No.” He laughed again. ”No--not thus far, my dear.” He laughed a third time, with still stronger and stranger mockery. ”She congratulated me on my engagement with a sincerity that would have piqued a man who was interested in her.”
”Will you forgive me?” Josephine said. ”What I've just been feeling and saying and putting you through--it's beneath both of us. I suppose a woman--no woman--can help being nasty where another woman is concerned.”
With his satirical good-humored smile, ”I don't in the least blame you.”
”And you'll not think less of me for giving way to a thing so vulgar?”
He kissed her with a carelessness that made her wince But she felt that she deserved it--and was grateful. He said: ”Why don't you go over and see for yourself? No doubt Tetlow gave you the address--and no doubt you have remembered it.”
She colored and hastily turned her head. ”Don't punish me,” she pleaded.
”Punish you? What nonsense! . . . Do you want me to take you over? The laboratory would interest you--and Miss Hallowell is lovelier than ever.
She has an easier life now. Office work wears on women terribly.”
Josephine looked at him with a beautiful smile of love and trust. ”You wish to be sure I'm cured. Well, can't you see that I am?”
”I don't see why you should be. I've said nothing one way or the other.”
She laughed gayly. ”You can't tempt me. I'm really cured. I think the only reason I had the attack was because Mr. Tetlow so evidently believed he was speaking the truth.”
”No doubt he did think he was. I'm sure, in the same circ.u.mstances, I'd think of anyone else just what he thinks of me.”
”Then why do you do it, Fred?” urged she with ill-concealed eagerness.
”It isn't fair to the girl, is it?”
”No one but you and Tetlow knows I'm doing it.”
”You're mistaken there, dear. Tetlow says a great many people down town are talking about it--that they say you go almost every day to Jersey City to see her. He accuses you of having ruined her reputation. He says she is quite innocent. He blames the whole thing upon you.”
Norman, standing with arms folded upon his broad chest, was gazing thoughtfully into the fire.
”You don't mind my telling you these things?” she said anxiously. ”Of course, I know they are lies----”
”So everyone is talking about it,” interrupted he, so absorbed that he had not heard her.
”You don't realize how conspicuous you are.”
He shrugged his shoulders. ”Well, it can't be helped.”
”You can't afford to be mixed up in a scandal,” she ventured, ”or to injure a poor little creature--I'm afraid you'll have to--to stop it.”
”Stop it.” His eyes gleamed with mirth and something else. ”It isn't my habit to heed gossip.”
”But think of _her_, Fred!”