“You’d better fan Mrs. Stone, she looks so warm,” suggested Mrs. Lalor. “The house is so heated, it makes one’s face burn after the cold air. Wouldn’t you like a little powder to cool it?” She jumped up hospitably, leaving Mr. Stone still upon the floor. “It isn’t the slightest trouble to get it, I always keep it in this little cupboard, with a puff and a handglass—and some rouge,” she explained in a confidential tone. “Not that I care for rouge myself, Bennie doesn’t like it, but some people always use it for the evenin’.”
Mrs. Stone gasped.
“Thank you, I need nothing of the kind,” she said hastily. She, the mother of four, a member of the Guild and the Vittoria Colonna Club to be spoken to in connection with rouge! Even Mrs. Laurence’s white chin went up—this did seem “common.”
“And I really think we’ll have to be going,” added Mrs. Stone with decision, rising as she spoke, a signal imitated by Mrs. Spicer, though Mrs. Frere sat fast.
“Oh, do wait for us,” pleaded Mrs. Laurence eagerly. “Here is my husband now. You’re ready to go now, aren’t you, Will?”
“Yes, as soon as I wrap up those documents,” he assented, with an unconscious exhilaration of tone that caught her ear. He disappeared into the opposite room once more. Mr. Lalor had just walked out of it, and down the length of the bare hall, with echoing steps.
“Oh, you must stay and have some more hot lemonade,” Mrs. Lalor begged warmly, and stopped suddenly short; a faint colour came into her cheek; it was as if she listened, not to the chorus, “No, not to-night——” “Thank you just the same——” “We really must go——” but to something impalpable, unguessed.
“Excuse me for just one moment,” she said and vanished swiftly into the narrow passage, leaving behind her a surprised, disapproving silence—even Mrs. Frere stood up; there was a queer, unexpected sensation that something was happening. Mrs. Laurence went out nervously to get her cloak. In that oblique glimpse down the hall to the dining-room she saw—or didn’t she really see anything?—a man’s arm stretched wildly out as if to reach something—a woman’s hand grasping it—the wavering shadow as of a struggle—and the faintest sound as of a key turning as it might be in a sideboard lock. Something must be happening——! Though only, indeed, one unimportant scene of a tragedy such as these happy, protected women had no knowledge of, that long, exquisitely heart-racking, unmentionable strain of living that companies the degradation of one who is loved.
“Did your coal come to-day, Mrs. Laurence?” asked Mrs. Stone in a chill, unnatural voice. They were all getting on their wraps now.
“No, it didn’t,” answered Mrs. Laurence. Justice compelled her to add, with an effort: “It wasn’t Harner’s fault, after all. Will forgot to order it on his way to the station; he felt so badly about it, but he’s had so much business on his mind lately that I really think I mustn’t ask him to do anything more.”