She made no reply; she could have answered that she had given up Fox to marry him, but the sting of the insult cut her to the quick, his allusive familiar tone was a whiplash. She turned away, her white face set, a singular light in her eyes. The passion of her hatred of him at that moment was almost beyond restraint; her very flesh quivered under the throb of her maddened nerves. His coarseness, his brutality, his sensuousness revolted her; she felt, under the sting of his lecture, a mere bondswoman, and her fetters fairly burned into her soul. It seemed to her that she could no longer breathe the same air with him.
The child caught her sleeve timidly. “Mamma, don’t!” she whispered, “please don’t make papa look so—I’m afraid!”
Margaret looking down at her saw anew that hateful likeness. “Go away!” she shuddered, “you’re just like him—I can’t bear it; go, I tell you!”
The child’s hand dropped and her lip quivered with impotent anguish; she could not understand, but she read her mother’s chilled, repellant look and it frightened her still more; she drew her arm across her face and fell away with a sob. Margaret, whose heart would have been touched at another moment, hardly heard her.
“I want you to understand,” White began again, angrily, unmindful of the little girl’s presence, “my position. I’m a—”
Margaret interrupted him with an impatient gesture. “Gertrude is coming with my gown,” she said coolly, “I think you may spare me any more at present.”
White turned with a frown, and seeing the maid at the door with her arms full of white satin and lace, he gave way with a growl of discontent while his wife smiled calmly at the startled girl and bade her hurry; it was nearly eight o’clock.
At the dinner Margaret was the most conspicuous and observed figure at the table; she was strikingly dressed in white satin, her lace bodice fastened on the shoulders with jewels, her long, slender throat wound with pearls, and the black lace scarf—which she wore in deference to her hostess who was dining a cardinal—only accentuated the peculiar pallor of her face and the whiteness of her bare arms. She was radiant, witty, vivacious; her reckless tongue never ceased its unmerciful chatter. She talked Spanish to the Spanish ambassador, Italian to the Papal delegate who sat opposite, she entertained the cardinal. Every eye was on her; she was at once the most unusual and the most talked of woman in Cabinet and Diplomatic circles, and she had a wit as keen as it was unmerciful.
White watched her with an increasing feeling of uneasiness, he read defiance in her manner and began to dread some overt challenge; he had been untimely in his remonstrance, and he felt it too late.