Georgia shuddered at the hateful touch, and her hands clinched as she listened, but Richmond's eye was upon her, and she only shook off the hand, and was silent.
"Do say you forgive me, Georgia, do, please, I am so sorry," fawned Freddy, with one arm around her neck.
"Oh, Richmond, take her away! Oh, Richmond, do!" she cried out, shrinking in loathing from her.
Freddy, with the sigh of deeply injured but forgiving spirit, got up and stood meekly before her.
"Really," began Mrs. Wildair, with haughty anger; but her son, with a darkened brow, said, hastily:
"Mother, leave her to me. Freddy, go; she does not know what she is saying; she will regret this by and by, and be the first to apologize. She is excited now; to-morrow you will see her in a very different frame of mind."
"I hope so, I am sure; it is very much needed, I must say," observed Mrs. Wildair, coldly, as, with a frown on her face, she drew Freddy's arm within hers and led her away.
"Oh, Richmond!" began Georgia, passionately lifting her eyes to his face.
And there she stopped, the words frozen on her lips. He did not speak, but catching her wrists in a steady grasp, he looked sternly and steadily in her eyes, until she sat shivering and trembling before him. And then he dropped her hands, and without a word drew her arm within his and led her down to where the rest were, and seated her on a sofa between Colonel Gleason and himself.
The song was finished, and amid a murmur of applause Miss Arlingford rose from the piano and came over to where Georgia sat, to inquire if she felt better. And then Captain Arlingford and Henry Gleason came, too, and Georgia was soon the center of a gay, laughing group, who strove to dissipate her gloom and restore the disturbed harmony of the evening. And Georgia, now that her evil genius was gone, remembering her husband's look, tried to smile and talk cheerfully with the rest, but, as she said herself, she had not yet learned to dissimulate. And the wild glitter of her eye and her marble-like face told a far different story, and her efforts to be at ease were so evident and so painful, that all felt it a relief when the hour came for retiring and they could seek their own rooms.