Page:Restless Earth.djvu/178

“On your part, not on ours. You were beautiful, but we were wise. And now you’ve been and gone and done it! But why did you have to fall in love with another woman’s husband?”

Patricia flushed and half rose from her chair.

“I think I would show a little belated wisdom if I caught the next train,” she said shortly, gathering up her gloves and purse.

“Sit down!” commanded Buzzy softly. “I’ve always been able to understand that two and two are four, Pat; and when you talk of ‘a national scandal’—well, there you are. Diagnosis is easy. The symptoms are marked. The temperature is erratic. Oh, sit down!”

Patricia sank into her seat again. She looked into the keen, sympathetic eyes of her friend, then placed an elbow upon the table and covered her eyes with her hand.

“Oh, Buzzy,” she murmured brokenly, “I’m so unhappy I want to die!”

Buzzy reached out and patted the unoccupied hand.

“Where is the sense in breaking your heart because the other woman is holding him, my dear?” she asked softly. “You’re not a hardened husband-snatcher. All the old hands know that———”

“The other woman is dead.”

Buzzy stared and sat immobile for a moment.

“Dead?”

“She—and their child—killed in Napier—where I have driven them.”

Buzzy Tennyson leaned back in her chair slowly, her gaze, infinitely tender, fixed upon Patricia’s bowed head. She was silent for many seconds, then she sighed, removed her cigarette from her lips and tapped the ash into the ash-tray.

“Ain’t it Hell?” she asked the circumambience softly.

Patricia looked up after a lengthy silence, and searched for a handkerchief.