“Very well, Harry,” acceded Margaret, dutifully, “if you insist I won’t wait for your return.”
Harry took the charming face in his hands, and kissed each eyelid, and then the lips. “I don’t deserve such an angel,” he asserted, his conscience pricking him, “and— Oh, hang Parmlee!” he growled, as her eyes, a little misty, looked up into his own. However, she belonged to him, and there were plenty of evenings, and—well— “Good-night, my treasure,” he ended.
⁂
Margaret remained standing where Harry had left her until she heard the front door close; then she collapsed on the sofa and softly sobbed her sense of desertion and grief into the pillow. The warnings of her family and friends recurred to her, and added to the pain of the moment a direful dread of the future. Not knowing that most bachelors are regular club men merely because it is the nearest approach to home life they can attain, she dwelt on his having been apparently wedded to these comforters of men, before marriage, and inferred a return to his former daily frequenting of them.
Her grief was keen enough to prevent her from noticing that the front door was presently opened, and not till she heard a faint cough in the room did she raise her head from the pillow. It was to find a servant with his back turned to the sofa, occupied, apparently, in setting a chair in a position entirely unsuited to it,—a proceeding he made far more noisy than became a well-trained butler, and which he accompanied with two more coughs.
Hurriedly wiping her eyes, Margaret asked, “What is it, Craig?”
With his eyes carefully focussed to see everything but his mistress’s face, the man came forward and held out his tray.
Almost mechanically she took the card upon it, and after a mere glance she directed,—“Say that Mrs. Tyler is not receiving this evening, and begs to be excused.”
Left alone once more, the young wife sat down upon a stool near the fire, and looked into the blaze, idly twirling the card. “I wonder,” she soliloquised presently, “if he would have done the same.” Again she lapsed into meditation, for a few minutes; then suddenly she sat up straight, with an air of sudden interest which was clearly derived from her own thoughts. A moment later, she gave a short, hesitating laugh. “If I only dared! I wonder if he would? Men are—” she said disconnectedly; but even as she spoke, her face softened. “Poor dear!” she murmured tenderly. Yet the words of pity melted into another laugh, and this time merriment and not guilt was as the dominant note. Springing to her feet with vivacity, she sped into the hall, and placed the card on the tray, and that in turn conspicuously on the hatrack. A second action consisted in turning on all the electric lights of the chandelier. This done, she touched the bell.
“You may close the house, Craig,” she ordered, when the servant responded to the summons, “but as Mr. Tyler has gone to his club, I wish you to leave these lights just as they are. I prefer that he should not come home to a darkened house, so don’t turn out one.” Giving one last glance, half merry and half guilty, at the bit of pasteboard put in so prominent a position, Margaret lightly tripped upstairs, humming something to herself.