"Did I say so? Of course in the dark I couldn't see. In any case, I am very, very sorry for the whole business; and I do hope, dear Lina, that you won't take it too much to heart. Remember, Mr. Armstrong is only a very slight and recent acquaintance; it isn't as if he were an old friend. Don't worry yourself about him, dear."
"I don't want your sympathy and I don't want your advice; I don't believe in either of them!" flamed out poor Laline. "I believe that these are all lies and that Mr. Armstrong will be easily able to disprove them. And as to being a mere acquaintance—I love him, and I am going to marry him!"
With that, Laline swept from the room, desperately unhappy, but determined in spite of all appearances to be loyal to the man she loved.
She tried not to think about him in church, tried to appear at luncheon as though nothing had ruffled her usual serenity. But Clare's exaggerated consideration and obvious sympathy were well-nigh intolerable. Laline could neither eat nor talk, and could hardly keep back from her eyes tears of shame and vexation at the turn things had taken since the morning.
Wallace, her chivalrous, tender, manly lover, a drunkard and an insensate brute! The thought seemed sacrilege. And yet Laline remembered she had somewhere heard that dipsomaniacs were often, but for that one hideous vice, among the most refined and sweet-natured of men. Of one thing she was the more resolved every hour—she would see her husband at once, tax him with what she had learned, and if possible elicit from him the entire truth. If only her influence might avail to wean him from this degrading vice she would not for one moment hesitate, but would dedicate her life to the task of reclaiming him.
With these conflicting reflections agitating her mind, she could hardly pretend to pay any attention to Clare's easy and incessant flow of chatter during the course of the meal any more than she could attune her mind to Mrs. Vandeleur's fantastic talk in her study in the afternoon. The little lady shook her head sadly as she looked at her secretary.
"Already spoiled! Already spoiled!" she murmured. "Lina, have you nothing to say to me?"
"I shall have ever so much that I want to say to you by this time to-morrow!" Laline cried, springing from her chair and beginning to move restlessly about the room. "But you must let me see Mr. Armstrong once more first, dear Mrs. Vandeleur. After that, I promise I will tell you the entire truth."
The little sibyl looked at her long and intently through her jewelled eye-glasses.
"You are very much in love," she observed, in her light silvery voice, and forthwith sighed. "It is a great pity, when we were getting on so well together," she added, regretfully. "I wish," said Laline, wistfully, "that you could tell me whether it will all turn out happily. What does it mean, Mrs. Vandeleur, when one dares not look ahead, when one watches the hands of the clock in dread of what the next hour will bring forth? And all for no reason or for insufficient reason. It is true that to-day I have heard something that troubles me greatly. But I was not wholly unprepared to face it, and this dreadful foreboding seems to presage something even worse, some terrible misfortune for which I am wholly unprepared."