Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/88

 After he had delayed for a few minutes in the living room, Mrs. Russell came in.

"Where have they taken—Mr. Hale?" she questioned quietly.

Gregg told her.

She gazed at him, consideringly, and then she asked:

"Why are you waiting here?"

"I've sent for a lawyer named Rinderfeld; he'll be here in about an hour. You must tell him everything that happened here; and I think you had better tell him anything else he wants to know."

"Why?"

"He handles situations like this," Gregg explained shortly. "He'll know the best thing for us all to do."

"Oh! Then we're to—act together."

"Of course."

Gregg dropped into a chair near the front window where he could overlook the street. She took her place on the piano bench on the opposite side of the room and Gregg put her out of his mind after a moment; he half-turned his back to her and, bending down, he gazed toward the gay, new, tall residence hotels and two-room apartment structures which were visible by lights from their windows, and were etched in dim outline against the glare rising from the streets before them. In Gregg's mind, previously, the life about here had represented to him, vaguely, a modern stage of personal relationships, rapidly replacing the more familiar sort in which he had grown up. He had never bothered his mind about so silly a speculation as to whether this stage "ought" to replace the other; his brain did not function in such useless ways. He observed as a simple, obvious fact that the easy, irresponsible-appearing way of living, which was represented