“Obey marching orders. Forward. Do the nearest duty at once, and with all your might.”
Ursula sighed again, still more wearily, and, going out into the passage, happed upon her aunt. Miss Mopius passed on her way to the store-cupboard, her joined hands overweighted with eggs. At sight of her successful rival she started, and one of the eggs flopped down on the stones in slimy collapse.
“I can understand your exultation, Ursula,” said Miss Mopius, all a-quiver, “but don’t sneer at me like that. I won’t stand it. Some day, perhaps, you also will know the curse of Eve.”
Ursula, in the cruelty of her youth and beauty, barely pitied her aunt.
“What was the curse of Eve?” she inquired.
“Adam,” retorted Miss Mopius, and dropped another egg.
“I’ll wipe up the mess,” said Ursula, sweetly.
Miss Mopius beat a hasty retreat. She spent the rest of the afternoon diluting one solitary globule of a patent medicine through a series of thirteen brimming decanters of water. A tumbler from the first decanter was poured into the second, and so on through the lot. The thirteenth solution, said the advertisement, was the most “potent.” Miss Mopius believed the advertisement. The magnificent name of the small globule had an ever-recurring charm for her. It was called “Sympathetico Lob.” “Lob,” especially, struck her as so delightfully mysterious. And it cured dizziness, palpitation, bad taste in the mouth, liver complaint, rheumatism, St. Vitus’ dance, stitch in the side, and heartburn, besides being highly recommended for cases of agitation, nervous depression, sudden bereavement, and disappointed love. Miss Mopius found it very helpful. She sat in her darkened room, amid the falling twilight, sipping.
That evening there was consternation in the big drawing-room at the Horst. It spread itself like a great mist between the occupants of the apartment, and prevented their looking into each other’s eyes. The oppression had begun round Gerard’s vacant chair at the dinner-table; it now deepened about the Baroness, where she sat apart from the rest, straightened among the soft silks of her causeuse. In the lap of her pearl gray evening-dress lay a crumpled white scrap from Gerard: