"Ah, don't!" Miss Sherman murmured pitifully.
"If Violet wasn't such a darn FOOL--" Miss Cashell said lightly, and stopped.
"What IS it?" asked Susan.
Her voice died on a dead silence. Miss Thornton, beginning to gather up veil and gloves and handbag scattered on the table, pursed her lips virtuously. Miss Cashell manicured steadily. Miss Sherman bit off a thread.
"It's nothing at all!" said Elsie Kirk, at last. "My sister's got a headache, that's all, and she doesn't feel well." She patted the bowed shoulders. "And parties who have nothing better to do," she added, viciously turning to Miss Thornton, "have butted in about it!"
"I'm all right now," said Violet suddenly, raising a face so terribly blotched and swollen from tears that Susan was genuinely horrified. Violet's weak eyes were set in puffy rings of unnatural whiteness, her loose, weak little mouth sagged, her bosom, in its preposterous, transparent white lace shirtwaist, rose and fell convulsively. In her voice was some shocking quality of unwomanliness, some lack of pride, and reserve, and courage.
"All I wanted was to do like other girls do," said the swollen lips, as Violet began to cry again, and to dab her eyes with a soaked rag of a handkerchief. "I never meant nothing! 'N' Mamma says she KNOWS it wasn't all my fault!" she went on, half maudlin in her abandonment.
Susan gasped. There was a general gasp.
"Don't, Vi!" said her sister tenderly. "It ain't your fault if there are skunks in the world like Mr. Phil Hunter," she said, in a reckless half-whisper. "If Papa was alive he'd shoot him down like a dog!"
"He ought to be shot down!" cried Susan, firing.