“Oh, it needn't be true,” said Algernon; and with meaning, “Who's to blame if it is?”
Mrs. Lovell again reddened. She touched Algernon's fingers.
“His friends mustn't forsake him, in any case.”
“By Jove! you are the right sort of woman,” cried Algernon.
It was beyond his faculties to divine that her not forsaking of Edward might haply come to mean something disastrous to him. The touch of Mrs. Lovell's hand made him forget Rhoda in a twinkling. He detained it, audaciously, even until she frowned with petulance and stamped her foot.
There was over her bosom a large cameo-brooch, representing a tomb under a palm-tree, and the figure of a veiled woman with her head bowed upon the tomb. This brooch was falling, when Algernon caught it. The pin tore his finger, and in the energy of pain he dashed the brooch to her feet, with immediate outcries of violent disgust at himself and exclamations for pardon. He picked up the brooch. It was open. A strange, discoloured, folded substance lay on the floor of the carriage. Mrs. Lovell gazed down at it, and then at him, ghastly pale. He lifted it by one corner, and the diminutive folded squares came out, revealing a strip of red-stained handkerchief.
Mrs. Lovell grasped it, and thrust it out of sight.
She spoke as they approached the church-door: “Mention nothing of this to a soul, or you forfeit my friendship for ever.”
When they alighted, she was smiling in her old affable manner.