Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/328

 some of that before him last night when Billy was abusing him; and he flushed like a boy. He's feelings; of course, he has fine feelings which no one credits him with because of his business; that's not fair to him when his business is necessary; at least, it's been necessary to us."

Gregg thrust his paddle in deep, drew it powerfully backward and lifted it out. "You're going to talk over with Rinderfeld what you ought to do now?"

"Yes," said Marjorie. "Wouldn't you?"

He held the paddle athwart again and listened to it drip, drip beside him; he listened, also, to the thump, thump of his pounding heart. Almost, as on the last night when he had been with her and she had told him of Rinderfeld, almost he spoke against the man who, without her knowing it, had caught such hold of her. But, then and throughout that week before she went away and he knew she was going, Gregg had played the side of trusting her to herself; and now he decided to play it out and so, putting his paddle into the water again, he replied:

"Yes, I'd hear what Rinderfeld has to say."

Billy, of course, had never played that side; and he was never further from any impulse to chance it than he was on the next evening when he learned the reason Marjorie was not at home to see him was that she had gone out alone with Felix Rinderfeld.

There was no doubt whatever that she had dined with him at a certain "garden" which Billy reached not ten minutes after they had left it; for a man who knew both of them had seen them together. For some reason they had risen rather abruptly, leaving on their table an order which had just been served. During the forty minutes following, Billy had no track of them