“I said I couldn’t and that John couldn’t go either, because he had to be in his office early to-morrow morning. He said no; he didn’t need more than three or four hours’ sleep, and he would be only too glad to escort Julietta, since if I had a headache, I’d probably go to bed, and he’d have nothing to do. At dinner I asked him please not to go; _please_ to stay with me, instead. He said in his kindest way that he’d be glad to, any other night, but it was impossible this evening since he’d ‘promised Julietta,’ and couldn’t possibly break a promise. So he went—and I found I couldn’t stay in the house and think it over any longer. Hobart, you mustn’t go out there and help them pretend to play golf to-morrow.” “Very well,” he said, gravely. “I’ll do whatever you wish. But isn’t it just possible you’d rather have me with them? If Julietta really is the designing person you believe she is——” “If!” Mildred cried with sudden loudness. “‘If’ she is! You don’t understand, Hobart. This is what happened in the car just before we reached her house to-night;—it happens all the time. She made a gesture—she always talks with gestures—and her hand smashed against the door-frame and broke the crystal of her wrist-watch. She said she was sure the works were broken, too. It was a plain gold watch, old and not very valuable, but she made a great lamentation over it. John took it from her, put it in his pocket, and said that since it was broken in our car it was our place to restore it; she should have a new one as near like it as possible to-morrow;—it would be the ‘greatest privilege’ to obtain it for her! She _knew_ that was just what he’d do, and she broke it on purpose, of course.” “Mildred, you really believe——” She stopped him. “You don’t understand. It goes on all the time. And if she does this much under my very eyes, what doesn’t she get out of him when they’re alone together?” “There might be something reassuring in that,” Hobart suggested. “If she spends her energies getting these trifles from him—because of course that’s all they are to a man in old John’s position—doesn’t that look as if her designs might be limited to——” “No, it does not,” Mrs. Simms interrupted, promptly. “But——” “No,” his wife repeated. “Don’t you see that the very fact of her wanting the trifles would make her want something a great deal more important, and that’s to be in a position where she wouldn’t have to work for them?” “Well, then,” her husband returned;—“if she expects to reach that position by supplanting Mildred, she has a ridiculous ambition!”