“Oh, dear,” said Irene with a shiver, nestling closer to Max, “isn’t it too bad? I hope he will not die; I look so much older in black. It isn’t a bit becoming, and to think that it should happen right in the midst of our party. I declare it is enough to make any one out of patience. I cannot go to the house, for I should get frightened to death to see any person die.”
“I cannot let you go, then. Perhaps you had better wait until it is over.”
“I am afraid Scott will give me a terrible scolding. You do not know him; he is so cruel.”
“Cruel to you, my darling? The man who could be so is a brute,” and Max bent his handsome head until his lips touched the silken hair of the fair, weak woman whom he was leading on from the high pedestal on which she might have stood, down, down to the lowest depths of woman’s degradation.
“Be careful,” she said, smiling and lifting her jewelled hand, “he might be looking for me; you know he is terribly jealous.”
“How very hard it is to think of spending your life with one so wholly unsuited to you.”
“Oh, dear, yes; and now I see it when it is too late to rectify the mistake.”
“It is not yet too late.”
“Why, what do you mean?” she asked, feigning innocence.