CHRISTMAS EVE.
Not until she was dressing for dinner did Edna Rutherford find herself alone with her husband. Then, between sobs and buttoning her shoes, broken sentences and doing up her hair, she, metaphorically speaking, smote her breast and cried, "Mea culpa! mea culpa! I have sinned against thee! Forgive me!"
Rutherford was not only a shrewd lawyer, but a natural diplomat; and finding himself master of the situation, he took advantage of it to exact a promise—which she passionately and penitently gave—that she would "never again suspect him; no, not even on the evidence of her own eyes and ears." This signal victory and the extreme comprehensiveness of the articles of capitulation thus agreed upon enabled Mr. Rutherford to meet Mr. and Mrs. Honey with that calm, clear conscience which finds its strength in the certainty of the impossibility of detection. He greeted them with the unruffled mien and courteous ease of the polished gentleman—a manner that fairly overwhelmed the ex-man-servant, and made him feel that to possess it he would willingly have bartered his remote future to the arch-fiend. None but Honey himself knew how unhappy he was made by his dress-suit, which seemed to persistently inspire him with the idea that he was still a waiter; or how wretched he was in the constant fear that he would be betrayed by that inspiration into the doing of something for which Mrs. Honey would pounce upon him. In vain he had implored his inexorable partner to be allowed to stay at home, impressing those considerations upon her with all the eloquence of which he was possessed; and indeed she saw for herself that he could not refrain, when he wore his dress-coat, from laying his handkerchief over his left arm like a waiter's napkin. Mrs. Honey replied, however, that he must meet people on a footing of equality or he would never learn how to conduct himself properly in society; an argument which finally induced him to accompany her, shamefacedly.
Only the persons already mentioned in this narration sat down that afternoon to what was destined to be a fateful Christmas Eve dinner. Smiling faces masked anxious hearts, all round the board. The Wildfens had had a more than usually spirited battle of words just before coming down from their room. Mr. Honey endured the misery of constant effort for the maintenance of a correct deportment, to insure which his wife seemed to fix her gray eyes steadily upon him with a stony glare, while she held an iron-shod heel ever ready to crunch his corns as a silent monition. Edna was still afraid that her husband had not really forgiven her in his heart; and Rutherford's mind was far from easy. Plowden felt that he might just as well be a murderer as a mere bigamist, so conscience-stricken and care-ridden was he. Miss Fithian, osseous, grim, and scowling, looked like "the skeleton at the feast," and felt like "the dread Avenger." The only undisturbed soul present was that of pretty, gentle Mrs. Plowden.
Walnuts and wine were reached at last. Then Mrs. Wildfen remembered how fond Mrs. Honey used to be of making speeches, wherever she might air her oratorical gifts, and in an unlucky moment called upon her to make a speech.
Mrs. Honey was in the act of rising to respond, when Miss Fithian, rudely pushing her down upon her chair, took precedence and demanded of Mrs. Wildfen:
"You want a speech, do you? I'll make you one that will make certain persons here tremble."
There was no doubt about that. Two of them—the conspirators—were trembling already. They felt instinctively that the hour of trouble for them had arrived.
"Cousin Edna," continued the spinster, "I regret the pain I feel it my duty to inflict upon you, but that false husband of yours has again deceived you."
Mrs. Rutherford sprang to her feet, instantly armed cap-à-pie with her never-failing jealousy: "What do you mean?" she gasped.