"Madeleine! Madeleine! You have changed so completely! I cannot believe that you'll never be the same Madeleine again. Why—you—you look as if you were not there at all!"
"Only my shell is here. The real me is with him."
"Curse the man! Curse him! Curse him! I wish I'd blown out his brains!"
He threw his arms about wildly and she wondered if he would strike her.
But he threw himself into a chair and burst into heavy sobbing.
Madeleine ran out of the room.
XXXI
"I tell you it's true. You needn't pooh-pooh at me, Antoinette McLane.
I have it on the best authority."
"Old Ben Travers, I suppose!"
"No, it's not Ben Travers, although he'll find it out soon enough. Her chambermaid knows my cook. She is devoted to Madeleine, evidently, and cried after she had told it, but—well, I suppose it was too good for any mere female to keep."
"Servants' gossip," replied Mrs. McLane witheringly. "I should think it would be beneath your self-respect to listen to it. Fancy gossiping with one's cook."
"I didn't," replied Mrs. Abbott with dignity. "She told my maid, and if we didn't listen to our maids' gossip how much would we really know about what goes on in this town?"
Mrs. McLane, Mrs. Ballinger, Guadalupe Hathaway and Sally Abbott were sitting in Mrs. Abbott's large and hideous front parlor after luncheon, and she had tormented them throughout the meal with a promise of "something that would make their hair stand on end."