CHAPTER X.
THE BLACKMAILERS "They're late this afternoon." "Yes.

I think they might be on time.

I wish they had made the appointment in a quieter place." "What do you care, Anita?
Probably somebody else is doing the same thing somewhere else.

What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose." "I know he has treated me like a dog, Alice, but--" There was just a trace of a catch in the voice of the second woman as she broke off the remark and left it unfinished.
Constance Dunlap had caught the words unintentionally above the hum of conversation and the snatches of tuneful music wafted from the large dining-room where day was being turned into night.
She had dropped into the fashionable new Vanderveer Hotel, not to meet any one, but because she liked to watch the people in "Peacock Alley," as the corridor of the hotel was often popularly called.
Somehow, as she sat inconspicuously in a deep chair in an angle, she felt that very few of the gaily chatting couples or of the waiting men and women about her were quite what they seemed on the surface.
The conversation from around the angle confirmed her opinion.

Here, apparently at least, were two young married women with a grievance, and it was not for those against whom they had the grievance, real or imagined, that they were waiting so anxiously.
Constance leaned forward to see them better.