“What a fool you must think me!” she cried in dire chagrin. “What a stupid fool!”
He had not taken his eyes from her transfigured face. He had listened with his jaw set, his lips tightly pressed, his brow dark with anger.
“I don't think that,” he said shortly. “You have merely lost your head, as any woman might, over a picturesque, good-looking soldier of fortune. Perhaps I should not be surprised, nor even shocked by what you've just told me. He is the sort that women do fall in love with,—and I suppose they are not to be blamed for it. No, I do not think you are a fool. When one reflects that such experienced heads as those possessed by the irreproachable Obosky, the immaculate Amori,—to say nothing of the estimable lady we are pleased to call the 'Empress of Brazil,'—when such heads as theirs are turned by a man it is high time to admit that he has something more than personal magnetism. I am wondering how far the contagion has really spread. There is a difference between contagion and infection, you know. Infection is the result of personal contact,—contagion is something in the air. This epidemic of infatuation very plainly is in two forms. It appears to be both infectious and contagious. I rather fancy the amiable Obosky has selected the former type of the prevailing malady. Percivalitis, I believe, is the name it goes by.”
There was no mistaking the significance of his words. The implication was clear, even though veiled in the heaviest sarcasm. He had the satisfaction of seeing the colour ebb from her cheek. Her face being averted, he missed the swift flicker of pain that rushed to her eyes and, departing, took away with it the soft light that had glowed in them the instant before. He had touched a concealed canker,—the sensitive spot that had been the real cause of her sleepless, troubled nights,—the thing she had refused in her pride to accept as the real source of discomfort.
Down in her soul lay the poison of jealousy, a cruel and malignant influence that until now had been subdued by a mind stubbornly unwilling to recognize its existence.
In the eagerness to supply herself with additional reasons for hating Percival, she had given her imagination a rather free rein in regard to his relations with Olga Obosky. While she was without actual proof, she nevertheless tortured herself with suspicions that came almost to the same thing; in any case, they had the desired effect in that they created a very positive sense of irritation, and nothing seemed to please her more in the dead hour of night than the feeling that she had a right to be disgusted with him.
And now, Landover, in his sly arraignment, prodded a very live, raw spot, and she knew that it was bleak unhappiness and not rancour that had kept her awake.
“Is it necessary to beat about the bush, Mr. Land-over? If you have anything definite to tell me about Mr. Percival and Madame Obosky, I grant you permission to say all you have to say in the plainest language. Call a spade a spade. I am quite old enough to hear things called by their right names.”
“Since you have been so quick to get my meaning, I don't consider it necessary to go into details. I daresay you have ears and eyes of your own. You can see and hear as well as I,—unless you are resolved to be both blind and deaf.”
“Did you not hear me say that I know he loves me?”