“Don’t go to the theater to-night, Annie! Send a note to say you are not well,” suggested George, when they reached the house where his sister-in-law was living. “You are not fit to act to-night; they must get somebody else,” he added, with the charming simplicity of the “outsider” in theatrical matters, who does not know how loath the rising actress is to give her “understudy” a chance of proving that she herself is not indispensable to the success of the piece.
“I must go, George; and it will be the best thing for me,” said she, with a grateful look at his anxious face. “Come and see me to-morrow; I want to talk to you.”
He left her unwillingly, and that night he took a stall at the theater where she was acting that he might be at hand in case she broke down. But there was no need of such a fear for the trained actress; her performance that night was, to a close observer, somewhat fitful and unequal; but she gave no other sign of the shock she had sustained that day—in fact, the excitement caused by it prevented her physical weariness from being so apparent.
The next morning, however, when George called, he found her sad and subdued, in spite of the efforts she made to seem as cheerful as usual. When she referred to the previous day, she did so quite calmly; but his self-command about the matter was not so great as hers, and he broke out in a few minutes and swore that he would find Harry out and upbraid him for his infamous conduct to the most perfect woman in the world.
“I am not that, George; and Harry knows it—that is the worst of it! If you were to tell him you and I had both recognized my jewels on another woman, he would tell you that it was only to be even with me for having preferred to his the society of another man.”
George looked at her in astonishment, for she spoke with bitter self-reproach and kept her eyes away from his.
“My dear Annie, you are reproaching yourself very unnecessarily. When Harry himself behaved to you like a coal-heaver, even he could scarcely be surprised that you preferred any society to his.”
“Not any society—I did not mean that.”
“No, but that of men of his own rank, but not quite of his manners,” said George, drawing his chair a little nearer to hers.
“I did not mean that either. As long as I preferred any society to his, it didn’t matter. So I thought myself safe; it seemed quite natural to dislike and fear Harry when he neglected me and snubbed me, and bullied and at last struck me. I felt that, if I stayed with him any longer, his very presence would poison me,” said she with rising excitement.