"But you've rectified them," Betty put in vigorously. "Nancy, dear, I've never known you to make a mistake that you haven't rectified, and that is more than I can say of any other person in the world." "Sirloin and carrots," Caroline said, as the next course came in. "I'll wager you've cut the price of this dinner in two by judicious ordering." "There's nothing else but field salad," Nancy said, still piteously, "and raspberry _mousse_." "Nancy, you'll break my heart," Betty said, wiping her eyes frankly, but Nancy only looked at her wonderingly, wistfully, preoccupied and remote, while Preston Eustace gazed at Betty as if he too would find a welcome relief in shedding a heavy tear or two. "Collier Pratt has broken her heart, Dick," Betty told him in the limousine on the way home. "It's been going on ever since the first time she saw him. Down at the restaurant we've all known it. She's been eating at his table every night for months, and Gaspard and everybody else in the place, in fact, has been a slave to his lightest whim. I've always disliked him intensely, myself." "Why didn't you tell me before, Betty?" "It wasn't my business to tell you. I thought it was coming off, you know." "What was coming off?" "Their affair. I thought it was past my meddling." "Do you mean to say that you thought Nancy was going to marry Collier Pratt--_Nancy_?" "Why, yes, if I hadn't I--I wouldn't have acted up the way I did in your rooms that night." But Dick neither heard nor understood her. "Do you mean to say that you think Collier Pratt has been making love to her?" "I think so." "But the damned scoundrel is married." "Oh!" Betty cried. "_Oh!_--I didn't know that." "I've known it--I've always known it," Dick said. "I never dreamed that Nancy had any special interest in him." "Well, she had. She's going through everything, Dick, even Sheila--you know how she loved Sheila?" "I know," Dick said grimly. "Do you mind going on home alone, Betty? You'll be perfectly safe with Williams, you know." "Of course not. What are you going to do, Dick? Are you going to Nancy?" "No, I'm not going to Nancy." Betty, looking at him more closely, realized for the first time that she was sitting beside a man in whom the rage of the primitive animal was gaining its ascendency. His breath was coming in short stertorous gasps, his hands were clinched, the purplish color was mounting to his brows, but he still went through the motions of a courteous leave-taking. "Where are you going, Dick?" she asked again, as he stood on the curb where he had signaled Williams to leave him, with the door of the car in his hand, staring down at it, and for the moment forgetting to close it. "I'm going to find Collier Pratt," he said thickly. Then with a slam that splintered the hinge of the door he was holding he crashed it in toward the car. CHAPTER XIX OTHER PEOPLE'S TROUBLES