She went into her sitting-room and he followed, muttering: 

“No wonder you ran away from me last night—­no wonder you didn’t have the face to stay and take what you deserve.  How in tophet I ever allowed you to plan and manage I can’t understand.”

“You asked me to,” she faltered.

“I didn’t ask you to rig up a dirty conspiracy to queer me.”

“Richard, you are not yourself.  You have been drinking!” She tried to exhibit protesting indignation and failed.  “Come to me when you are yourself.”

“There’s no more of this to-morrow business goes with me, Mrs. Kilgour.  I’ll admit that you’re Kate’s mother.  But just now you are something else.  You have tried to do me, and nobody gets by with that stuff—­man, woman, or child.  We’ll have our settlement here and now.”

“I did the best I could,” she wailed.

“Out of what damnation novel did you get that idea?” he raged.

“It seemed to be a good plan, Richard.  I swear by everything sacred I thought it would come out all right.  Don’t rave at me.”  Her voice sunk to an appealing whisper.  She picked up a book from her table.  “If you will only listen—­”

“So you did get it out of a novel!  My God! what have your fool ideas done to me?”

“How do you dare to talk to Kate’s mother like that?”

“I am not talking to Kate’s mother, I tell you!  I’m talking to a woman who has put me into a hell on earth.  I’m talking to you, Mrs. Kilgour, and you don’t know the whole story yet.”

“All my life it has been the same—­only trouble and sorrow and to be misunderstood.”  She began to sob.

“Is there anything in that novel about ringing in an iceman to break up a marriage?  I say it was all a conspiracy.  You didn’t intend to be square.  You intended to rig a scheme so that you could duck out from under.  You have always done that, Mrs. Kilgour.”

“I had nothing to do with that man coming in.”

“Don’t try to fool me any more.  You told me to come, didn’t you?  You must have told some yarn to your daughter to have her come.”

“I did—­it was all—­”

“And then you told that plug-ugly to come in, too, and break it up so as to queer me.  Why did I ever fall for such lunacy?  If I hadn’t been desperate I would never have let you drag me into such a devilish scheme.  But now you have got to do your part to square me.  It’s going to be straight talk from now on, Mrs. Kilgour.  There must be a settlement between us.”

She looked away from him.  She was plainly searching her soul for excuses to postpone that settlement.

“That person who came in, Dicky!  I swear I did not arrange any such thing.  He is only an iceman.  I don’t know the man.  It was some accident.  If the matter hadn’t been interrupted!  It was going along all right.”

“What’s the matter with your intellect?  You know it wasn’t going along at all!  You simply had us chasing shadows.  Good God!  I ought to have made you tell me what you were planning.  Think of it!  Think of me waltzing down there like a boob and thinking you had something real to offer.”