“When—how?”
“I knew it,” quoth Mrs. Marjoy, with intense pride. “I always knew that fellow was a scoundrel.”
“And Ophelia?” said Miss Snodley.
The three ladies looked at one another and tittered.
“It will take the airs out of her,” said Mrs. Mince.
“Serve her right,” quoth the doctor’s wife.
“Those Gussets were always so stuck up,” said Miss Snodley.
Then they all stared at one another again, embraced rapturously in the spirit, and indulged in more tittering.
“Tell us all about it,” said Mrs. Marjoy, reserving her own Domremy episode as a finale.
They drew their chairs closer together, like Macbeth’s witches over their reeking caldron. Mrs. Mince related Mrs. Primmer’s experiences, with certain embellishments of her own, doing abundant justice, as was to be expected, to the sinister aspects of the romance. When she had talked her fill, Mrs. Marjoy capped the tale with her own conclusions drawn from the Domremy incident. Indeed, the three ladies enjoyed themselves with much thoroughness that afternoon. No such sport had fallen to their barbs since a local farmer had been accused of starving his pigs, a very minor excitement. Christians they were in name, yet the spirit of imperial Rome still lingered in their bosoms. To have witnessed a combat between wild beasts and slaves was a display beyond the possibilities of the civilized arena. Indeed, the very mention of it would doubtless have inspired them with unctuous horror and strident indignation. Yet there was little difference in the main betwixt the tiger-hearted dames of Rome and these modern ladies, save that the latter were hypocrites, the former honest even in their depravity. The pagans gloated over agonies in the flesh, the Christians over agonies in the spirit.