At the present moment Mrs. Talboys came up the rising ground all alone, and at a quick pace. “The man has insulted me,” she said aloud, as well as her panting breath would allow her, and as soon as she was near enough to Mrs. Mackinnon to speak to her.
“I am sorry for that,” said Mrs. Mackinnon. “I suppose he has taken a little too much wine.”
“No; it was a premeditated insult. The base-hearted churl has failed to understand the meaning of true, honest sympathy.”
“He will forget all about it when he is sober,” said Mackinnon, meaning to comfort her.
“What care I what he remembers or what he forgets!” she said, turning upon poor Mackinnon indignantly. “You men grovel so in your ideas——” “And yet,” as Mackinnon said afterwards, “she had been telling me that I was a fool for the last three weeks.”—“You men grovel so in your ideas, that you cannot understand the feelings of a true-hearted woman. What can his forgetfulness or his remembrance be to me? Must not I remember this insult? Is it possible that I should forget it?”
Mr. and Mrs. Mackinnon only had gone forward to meet her; but, nevertheless, she spoke so loud that all heard her who were still clustered round the spot on which we had dined.
“What has become of Mr. O’Brien?” a lady whispered to me.
I had a field-glass with me, and, looking round, I saw his hat as he was walking inside the walls of the circus in the direction towards the city. “And very foolish he must feel,” said the lady.
“No doubt he is used to it,” said another.
“But considering her age, you know,” said the first, who might have been perhaps three years younger than Mrs. Talboys, and who was not herself averse to the excitement of a moderate flirtation. But then why should she have been averse, seeing that she had not as yet become subject to the will of any imperial lord?