"Oh!" Courtney drew a vast breath of relief. She felt a tugging at her skirt, glanced down. It was Winchie, looking up at her with an expression of terror; and she knew she must have revealed herself in her face. Her pale cheeks flooded with color. She sank into her chair opposite her husband. She could lie to herself, cheat herself, no longer. "How much Basil means to me!" she muttered. Then, in terror, she glanced round, for she felt as if she had shouted it. But Vaughan was at his unending calculations. Only Winchie saw. Only Winchie! There was a look in his great gray-green eyes, a look of the accusing angel, that made her hang her head while the dark red burned upon her whole body.
"He'll be back Thursday or Friday," continued Vaughan, tossing the pad into the window seat, a dozen feet away.
"You sent him on business?" inquired she, to make conversation.
"He wanted to go to Pittsburg, so he told me. I guess it's some girl. I suspect our 'dressy' friend of being a ladies' man. He takes too much trouble about his clothes—and silk underclothes! Anyhow, I let him go."
She sat there, the food untouched, her blood pounding at her temples, at her finger ends. For she was remembering her advice to Basil when she was trying both to persuade him to stay and to deceive herself as to why she intensely wished him to stay. And now, on her advice—on the advice of the woman who loved him—he was journeying—even as she sat quietly there at supper in respectable calm—he was journeying to his "old haunts"—to some woman—he who belonged to her! Such a wild tempest raged in her that she wondered how she could sit motionless, why she was not walking the floor and crying out. With another woman! Oh, the vileness of men! "And I was beginning to care for him!" she said to herself. "He's like the rest—worse than most. How many men are there who'd dare talk of love to a woman like me, and then go jauntily away to a low woman?"
She went upstairs immediately after supper, shut herself in. She moved calmly about; she took her exercises; she read for several hours before turning out her light. But beneath a surface that could have been no more tranquil had she been observed and on guard, chaos reigned. One tempest succeeded another—anger against Basil, against herself—disgust, scorn, jealousy—and, before she slept, she had seen that in reality all these moods were jealousy under different forms. The following morning, when the coast was clear, she slipped into his room, knelt by his untouched bed, cried upon its pillow. This humility soon wept itself out, however; she flung herself into her work. "Nonsense! I don't care for him. It's simply pique and outraged friendship. How coarse men are!"
"What's the matter, mamma?" said Winchie, who was following her about the garden, looking after insects and dead leaves. Than his there never was a keener eye for signs of the red spider.
"Why, dear?"
"You treat the flowers as if you wanted to hurt them."
"Your mamma is in a very naughty humor this morning."