A pen, flung down
forcibly, quivered erect with its one surviving nib in the blotting
pad. Mr. Lagune had flung it down.
The collapse of the previous night had distressed him dreadfully, and
ever and again before his retreat he had been breaking into passionate
monologue. The ruin of a life-work, it was, no less. Surely she had
known that Chaffery was a cheat. Had she not known? Silence. "After
so many kindnesses--"
She interrupted him with a wailing, "Oh, I know--I know."
But Lagune was remorseless and insisted she had betrayed him,
worse--made him ridiculous! Look at the "work" he had undertaken at
South Kensington--how could he go on with that now? How could he find
the heart? When his own typewriter sacrificed him to her stepfather's
trickery? "Trickery!"
The gesticulating hands became active, the grey eyes dilated with
indignation, the piping voice eloquent.
"If he hadn't cheated you, someone else would," was Ethel's inadequate
muttered retort, unheard by the seeker after phenomena.
It was perhaps not so bad as dismissal, but it certainly lasted
longer. And at home was Chaffery, grimly malignant at her failure to
secure that pneumatic glove. He had no right to blame her, he really
had not; but a disturbed temper is apt to falsify the scales of
justice.
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