"Your screen reminded me of your great lady, Bertha," he said, "because I saw her to-night, and—and heard her—and she was speaking of you."
"Of me!" she replied. "That was kind indeed."
"No," he returned, "it was not. She was neither generous nor lenient; she did not even speak the truth; and yet, as I heard her, I was obliged to confess that, to those who did not know you and only saw you as you were to-night, what she said might not appear so false."
Bertha turned her screen aside and looked at him composedly.
"She was speaking of Senator Planefield," she remarked, "and Judge Ballard, and Commander Barnacles. She reprehended my frivolity and deplored the tendency of the age."
"She was speaking of Senator Planefield," he answered.
She moved the screen a little.
"Has Senator Planefield been neglecting her?" she said. "I hope not."
"Lay your screen aside, Bertha," he commanded, hotly. "You don't need it. What I have to say will not disturb you, as I feared it would—no, I should say as I hoped it would. It is only this: that these people were speaking lightly of you—that they connected your name with Planefield's as—as no honest man is willing that the name of his wife should be connected with that of another man. That was all; and I, who am always interfering with your pleasures, could not bear it, and so have made the blunder of interfering again."
There were many things she had borne, of which she had said nothing to Agnes Sylvestre in telling her story,—things she had forced herself to ignore or pass by; but just now some sudden, passionate realization of them was too much for her, and she answered him in words she felt it was madness to utter even as they leaped to her lips.