"Really? I wonder that we have not met before, then," Mrs. Mencke remarked, with some surprise.
"It is not strange," said Lady Cameron, with a sigh, "for my son and I are still too sad to care to go much into company, and we should not have been here this evening but for a special request of your consul, who is an old and valued friend."
Mrs. Mencke colored vividly at this reply, and began to make excuses for her own presence there; but Lady Cameron, with a disapproving glance over her elegant and showy costume, only bowed with reserved courtesy in reply, and then, as Lord Cameron accosted an acquaintance who was approached, she excused herself and turned to greet her friend, leaving Mrs. Mencke boiling with rage over their distant reception, and bitterly disappointed at not having secured an invitation even to call upon them.
She felt humiliated as well as angry, and too wrought up to longer enjoy the gayeties of the evening, she retired at an early hour from the reception.
The unhappy woman had other causes, aside from the failure of her matrimonial schemes and the contempt of the Camerons, for anxiety and unhappiness.
Her husband, during the last few months, while visiting various resorts, had developed an alarming taste for gambling, and had, to her knowledge, lost large sums of money; while he seemed perfectly reckless in his expenditure, and she felt sure, though she did not yet dream the worst, that their own as well as Violet's fortune was fast melting away.
Deep and frequent potations at the cup, too, were showing their effect upon him; he was growing more gross and coarse, and his temper suffered in proportion with the continuous nervous excitement under which he was laboring.
All this must have an end sooner or later, she knew, but she was not prepared to have it come so soon as it did.
Four weeks after her meeting with the Camerons the man returned to her, late one night, from a terrible orgie. His face was bloated and crimson from drink; his eyes wild and blood-shot, his hair disheveled, and his clothing soiled and disordered.
Coming rudely into his wife's presence, he cried out with a shocking oath: