"Oh, rings--!" Mr. Pitman didn't call rings anything. "I've given Mrs.
Drack a ring."

Julia stared. "Then aren't you her lover?"

"That, dear child," he humorously wailed, "is what I want you to find
out! But I'll handle your rings all right," he more lucidly added.

"You'll 'handle' them?"

"I'll fix your lovers. I'll lie about _them_, if that's all you want."

"Oh, about 'them'--!" She turned away with a sombre drop, seeing so
little in it. "That wouldn't count--from _you_!" She saw the great
shining room, with its mockery of art and "style" and security, all
the things she was vainly after, and its few scattered visitors who
had left them, Mr. Pitman and herself, in their ample corner, so
conveniently at ease. There was only a lady in one of the far
doorways, of whom she took vague note and who seemed to be looking at
them. "They'd have to lie for themselves!"

"Do you mean he's capable of putting it to them?"

Mr. Pitman's tone threw discredit on that possibility, but she knew
perfectly well what she meant. "Not of getting at them directly, not,
as mother says, of nosing round himself; but of listening--and small
blame to him!--to the horrible things other people say of me."

"But what other people?"