She seemed to be speaking to everyone, and everyone seemed to be crowding around her. He couldn’t go up like everyone else, because the awful and bony young lady was talking hard at him and heightened her charms with a smile that took up two-fifths of her face, and wrinkled all the rest.
Her name was Lome—Maude Lome. He knew that she must be a relative without being told, because otherwise she wouldn’t have been invited at all. Anyone could divine that.
“Oh, isn’t dear Betty just lovely?” this fearful freak said. “I think she’s just too lovely for anything! She’s my cousin, you know; we’re often mistaken for one another.”
“I can well believe it,” said Jack, heavily, not ceasing to stare beyond as he said it.
(Married!)
“Oh, you’re flattering me! Because she’s ever so much prettier than I am, and I know it.”
He didn’t reply. It had suddenly come over him to wonder whether there ever had been an authentic case of heartbreak. Because he had the most terrible ache right in his left side!
(Married! Married!)
“But, then,” Miss Lome continued, “I’m younger than she is. Her being married makes her seem young, but she’s really twenty-four. I’m only twenty.”
He shut his eyes, and then opened them. He wished he hadn’t come here, and then grew shivery to think that he might have happened not to; and all the while that awful twisting and wrenching at his heart was getting worse and worse.