Few indeed are they who can look beautiful under such circumstances, but Miss Moyne certainly did, especially in the eyes of Crane and Peck as they gazed up at her.
Forthwith the tragedy became a farce.
“That Kentuckian must romance, I suppose,” grumbled R. Hobbs Lucas. “Wonder what he’ll tell next.”
“I don’t see how I could be so mistaken,” said Peck, after quiet had been somewhat restored, “I would have willingly been sworn to—”
He was interrupted by a dozen voices hurling ironical phrases at him.
“It is every word truth,” exclaimed Crane testily. “Do you suppose I would trifle with so—”
“Oh, don’t you absolutely know that we suppose just that very thing?” said Lucas.
With the return of self-consciousness the company began to scatter, the ladies especially scampering to their rooms with rustling celerity. The men grumbled not a little, as if being deprived of a shocking accident touched them with a sting.
“The grotesque idea!” ejaculated Dufour. “Such a practical joke—impractical joke, I might better say, could originate only between a poet and a critic.”
Everybody went back to bed, feeling more or less injured by Crane and Peck, who shared in their own breasts the common impression that they had made great fools of themselves. If these crest-fallen knights, so lately militant and self-confident, had any cause of quarrel now it was based upon a question as to which should feel the meaner and which should more deeply dread to meet Miss Moyne on the morrow.