“No.”
“Then you are a harlot,” he said, deliberately. “It only needed that.” He rose to his feet and looked contemptuously at her scarlet face. “At all events it was an amusing episode,” he said. “Good-night.”
XIV
It was a matter of comment before the summer was over, both among the guests at Peele Manor and the neighbours, that Mr. and Mrs. Beverly Peele had come to the parting of the ways. As the young man’s infatuation was as notable as his wife’s indifference, he received the larger share of sympathy. The married men championed Patience and expressed it in their time-honoured fashion; and although they worried her she looked forward with terror to the winter: she would willingly have taken them all to board and trusted to their wives to keep them in order.
Beverly had confided his woes long since to his mother. She declined to discuss the subject with her daughter-in-law, but treated her with a chill severity. Fortunately they were gay that summer, and Patience had much to do. Hal and May were absorbed in preparations for their wedding, and the duties of hostess fell largely on her shoulders.
Late in the fall there was a double wedding under the medallion of Peele the First. Immediately thereafter May went to Cuba; and Hal to Europe, to pay a series of visits. Mrs. Peele continued to entertain, and was obliged to confess that her daughter-in-law was very useful, and in deportment above reproach. Outwardly Patience looked almost as cold a woman of the world as herself, and gave no evidence of the storms brewing within; but one day she hung out a signal. Mrs. Peele announced that she should go to town on the first of December. Patience followed her into her bedroom and closed the door.
“May I speak to you a moment alone?” she asked.
“Certainly,” said Mrs. Peele, frigidly. “Will you sit down?”
She herself took an upright chair, and suggested, Patience thought, a judge on his bench.
“I want to go to town with you this winter.”