They ran to chafe her face and hands and to drop tender little kisses on her brow, until she seemed to revive, and murmured faintly:
“I am better now. Go on, tell me everything.”
“Of course, we overwhelmed him with bitter reproaches,” declared Marie, “and we told him we wanted nothing more to do with him, or with the low nobody he has married.”
“And he said—what?” demanded Rosalind.
“He pleaded for her at first, and then when he saw we were not to be placated, he grew angry, too, and left the house, saying he would rather have his little bride’s love than ours. So as soon as he left we telegraphed father, in Washington, to come home at once and see if he could do anything to break up the match, for Charley had suddenly lost his mind and married a low actress that we could never receive in the family, to say nothing of the slight he had put upon you!”
“Cruel! cruel! Oh, my heart will break! I can never hold up my head again for very shame; me, Rosalind Montague, to be jilted for a creature like that—the daughter of the New Market tailoress, a woman that worked by the day in a shop!” groaned Rosalind hysterically.
“Then you know the girl?” asked Madam Fortescue.
“Yes, she grew up in abject poverty there in New Market. Her father drove a delivery wagon—till he died—for the tailor his wife sewed for, and there were a host of children, and this girl, the youngest, who grew up idle and rather pretty so that she cared for nothing but flirting and flaunting about, never soiling her hands with honest work. I knew that Charley flirted with her a little, but mamma advised me not to find fault with him, saying it wouldn’t amount to anything. Soon after she disappeared from the town and I never saw her again until that night of the play. I was almost sure that Vera Vane was little frisky, flirting Berry Vining, the little schemer, that has cut me out of my lover!”
They hastened to caress her again, assuring her of their warm sympathy, and adding their unalterable determination never to accept the scheming little actress for a sister. Charley could never be their brother again, either; they would punish him by treating him as a stranger.
“If he had told you that he loved her best and wanted his freedom, it would not have seemed quite so wicked, but when he told us he had done so, we did not believe him, as you would have told us if such were the case,” added Mrs. Fortescue.