Part 83 (1/2)
Winifred lied angelically. ”Cornelia was telling me how famously you and Willie get along. You're so congenial.”
Persis recognized the intended obloquy, and beamed in answer: ”Willie is a duck of a husband. Why don't you try marriage?”
This was so straight a lunge that Winifred slid in a sly _riposte_:
”Do you ever see that li'l snojer man of yours any more?”
”Li'l snojer man? Have I one?” said Persis, white-mouthed with fear at the directness of the attack, and at the simultaneous tingle of the door-bell. She tried to check Crofts, calling to him as he moved to the door. But he did not hear.
Mrs. Neff was enjoying the rare treat of seeing Persis discomfited, ill at ease. She joined the onset.
”She means Captain Forbes.”
”Yes--that's the one,” Winifred smiled. ”See him often?”
”Oh, once in a long while,” Persis confessed. ”Why?”
”I just wondered. He used to be so devoted to you.”
”Oh, that was ages ago,” Persis laughed. And then Crofts came in with his little salver. Persis regarded it with as much dread as if it bore the head of John the Baptist instead of a tiny white card.
Crofts was so proud of remembering his instructions that he murmured, with a senile smile: ”You told me you were at home to him, ma'am.”
Persis read the name, and it danced before her eyes, fantastically. In the phrase of the prize-fighters, ”they had her going.” It was all so simple and foolish, yet so naggingly annoying, that she was utterly nonplussed. She stood a moment snapping the card in her fingers. Then she had a mad inspiration. She smiled stupidly between Mrs. Neff and Winifred and said:
”It's my--my lawyer. I--I'll go to the door and see him.”
”But I asked him to come up!” Crofts protested in a doddering collapse, and vanished like a ghost at c.o.c.kcrow.
Forbes appeared at the door. He saw Persis, and there was no mistaking the love in his eyes. Then he saw Winifred and Mrs. Neff, and there was no mistaking his confusion, though he tried to put on a smile of delight at the sight of them.
Mrs. Neff grinned with rapturous malice, and bewildered Forbes utterly by asking three ironical questions and not staying for an answer:
”Changed your profession, Captain Forbes? A lawyer now? Specialty divorces?”
Then she nodded to Winifred, and they made their way out, ignoring Persis' outstretched hand.
CHAPTER LXV
Forbes stared after the two women in complete perplexity. He turned to Persis to ask stupidly:
”What did they mean, Persis?”
Persis had lost almost every whit of self-control. She had an insane desire to scream, to hide somewhere and go into hysterics. She sank into a chair and mumbled:
”They know everything.”
”Good G.o.d, it's not possible! Was it because I came in as I did?”