Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/344

 had worn a little color always in his scarfs; so she realized and said, "You heard before you went out."

"Yes; they got our old address—my old address—from the telephone book and tried to call somebody there by 'phone last night. Early this morning they got about and finally knocked up Dora, who was with her mother on the floor below; she gave them my address. I heard about seven o'clock."

And, bit by bit, as she could best hear it, he continued telling her.

"I got that car from Jim Cuncliffe and went out. What do you know, Marjorie? Just what's in the paper?"

"Yes." And then she told him. "Father brought it to me. He thought I—I'd been at Cragero's with Mr. Rinderfeld! He thought that was why Billy was there; and that was why Billy was there, because I was with Mr. Rinderfeld last night."

"Not at Cragero's!" Gregg denied almost sharply.

"No; but in town; we had dinner together or at least we started dinner together. We were talking and he asked me to marry him; I mean he started—I all at once understood that all along he meant—he had the idea I might marry him. I got up from the table; we'd just got our order, and he was only telling me some things about himself but you see"

"I see," said Gregg. "You went home; and he didn't."

"It's perfectly clear to me what happened then, Gregg. He'd been telling me, admitting to me frankly that girls—women like Mrs. Russell—had formed his life; but he had stopped going with them after he got to know me. He was trying to make himself fit, he said, for me; and when I got up because I couldn't sit