"Don't you remember? but you were such a child! Fred does. The Damon to his Pythias."
"Oh!"
A vivid scarlet ran up to the edge of Irene's white brow. So that was Jack Darcy. What a blind fool she had been, not to think! She had laughed and chatted with him, smiled on him, worn the costume of his designing,—a common workingman! For a moment she could have torn her hair, or beaten her slender white hands against the table. What had possessed her?
"I do recall some green and salad days," rejoined Fred with a laugh.
"How Agatha and I used to badger you! We were little fools to think such a thing ever went on when one came to years of discretion. Only I believe we were afraid the elder and idiotic Darcy might foist his son on some college. I must say Yerbury has become quite endurable now that party lines have been set up;" and Mrs. Eastman crumbed her cake, watching her diamond sparkle.
"How do you know Sylvie went on a picnic?" asked Rene, with an angry glitter in her eyes.
"Didn't the dear confess? Rene, you do not keep your penitent in very good order."
Mrs. Eastman had a faculty of putting something extremely irritating in her voice. It was honey smooth, and yet it rasped.
"Really," answered Irene indifferently, "I do not see that Miss Barry's selection of friends need affect me much, so long as she keeps the distasteful ones out of my way. I may wonder at her choice of pleasures, but I suppose she suits herself."
"My nursery-girl belongs to the mission-school. It was very good of Lissette to let her off for a whole day, I thought. I left her to settle it. What Sylvie sees in such people, I cannot imagine. I own I was a trifle surprised when I found this remarkable Mr. Darcy was our old bête noir, Jack. Is he still in the mill, I wonder?"