"Poor dear, you are suffering, as I foreboded, for last night's folly," she sighed.
"Please don't lecture me, mamma. I'm wretched enough without that!"
"I only meant to sympathize with you, dear."
"Then help me—that is the best sort of sympathy. I suppose it wouldn't be improper for you to call on Jesse, at his hotel, would it?"
"No, I suppose not."
"Then I will write my note to him, and you can take it—will you?"
Mrs. Clarke assented, and was on the point of starting when a messenger arrived with a note for Roma, replying to hers of the night before.
In spite of his broken right arm, Jesse Devereaux had managed a scrawl with his left hand, and Roma tore it open with a burning face and wildly beating heart, quickly mastering its contents, which read:
Mr. Devereaux accepts his dismissal with equanimity, feeling sure from this display of Miss Clarke's hasty temper that he has had a lucky escape.
It was cool, curt, airy, almost to insolence; a fitting match for her own; and Roma gasped and almost fainted.