“Pretty rough on your game foot, Halleck. But Marcia had got it into her head that it wasn't safe to trust you to help her down, even after you had helped her up.”
“Ben,” said Olive, when they were seated in the train the next day, “why did you send Marcia's husband up there to her?” She had the effect of not having rested till she could ask him.
“She was crying,” he answered.
“What do you suppose could have been the matter?”
“What you do: she was miserable about his coquetting with that woman.”
“Yes. I could see that she hated terribly to have her come; and that she felt put down by her all the time. What kind of person is Mrs. Macallister?”
“Oh, a fool,” replied Halleck. “All flirts are fools.”
“I think she's more wicked than foolish.”
“Oh, no, flirts are better than they seem,—perhaps because men are better than flirts think. But they make misery just the same.”
“Yes,” sighed Olive. “Poor Marcia, poor Marcia! But I suppose that, if it were not Mrs. Macallister, it would be some one else.”