Lady Standish slowly and languidly drew herself into a sitting posture, and raised a countenance marred out of its delicate beauty by the violent passion of her grief. Swimming blue eyes she fixed upon the Mistress Kitty's plump dimpling face.
"Alas!" she breathed upon the gust of a sigh that was as wet as an April breeze, and tripped up by a belated sob. "Alas! you see in me the most miserable of women. Alas! my heart is broken!"
Here the kerchief, soaked indeed beyond all possible utility, was frantically held to streaming eyes once more.
"Mercy!" cried the pretty widow, "you could not take on worse if you had the smallpox: you a three-months' wife!"
"Ah me!" moaned Lady Standish.
"So," said Mistress Kitty, "he has been a brute again, has he? Come, Julia, weep on my bosom. What is it now? Did he kiss you on the forehead instead of on the lips? Or did he say: 'Zounds, madam!' when you upset a dish of tea over his waistcoat? Or yet did he, could he, the monster!—nay it is not possible, yet men are so—could he have whispered that Lady Caroline looked—passable last night?"
Lady Standish rose to her feet, crumpled her kerchief in one small hand and faced her friend with tragic passion.
"It is useless to blind myself," she said. "Cease to gibe at me, pray, Mistress Bellairs; I must face the truth! My husband loves me no longer. Oh! Kitty, Kitty," dropping from her height of tragedy very quickly and landing on a whimper again, "is it not sad? I have tried, Heaven is my witness, to win him back by the tenderest love, by the most pitiful pleading. He has seen me weep and pine. 'Rob me of your love,' I have told him, 'and you rob me of life.' And he, he—oh, how shall I tell you! As the days go by he is with me less and less. He walks abroad with others. His evenings he gives to strangers—ay, and half his nights—while I may sob myself to sleep at home. I saw him to-day but for two minutes—'twas half an hour ago. He entered here upon me, looking, ah Kitty! as only he can look, the most elegant and beautiful of men. I was singing, piping as a poor bird may to strive and call its mate to the nest. He passed through the room without a word, without a sign; he that used to say 'twas heaven to sit and listen to my voice. 'What!' I exclaimed as he reached the door, 'not a word for poor Julia?' Kitty, at the sound of that cry, wrung from my heart, he turned and frowned, and said—— (Oh, oh, oh.)"
"Ha!" cried Mistress Kitty, "what said he?" ("Heaven help him," said she aside; "the woman's a fountain.")
"He said," sobbed Julia, "'Mayn't a man even go for a stroll?' Oh, had you but heard the cold indifferent tone, you would have understood how it cut me to the heart. I ran to him and laid my hand upon his sleeve, and he said——"