“Now, Richard!” exclaimed Emily. “I do wish that you wouldn’t talk slang. You artists are perfectly incorrigible in your use of slang.”
“All due to the artistic faculty, Emily dear,” he gaily returned. “Slang is the picturesque of language, and we must talk picturesquely, or die. But, conscience alive! Why, Harrington! And you, Muriel! What’s the matter? You look as if you had a touch of the ebony lamb’s complaint too.”
“Don’t jest, Richard,” said Harrington. “We have had an awful experience since we saw you.”
“Awful!” exclaimed Wentworth, turning pale. “Why, what’s happened?”
Emily came flying over to them, with her cheeks blanched, and her lips parted in frightened inquiry.
“What is it?” she cried. “Is anything the matter with Mrs. Eastman?”
“No, Emily; she is well,” replied Harrington. “Richard, the Hungarian fugitive is safe in the streets of Boston. No hound of Vienna can track him here. But the American fugitive is not safe here from the Vienna of the Union. The poor man, whose tale of suffering so moved you—he has been kidnapped in the streets of our city this evening.”
“My God!” shouted Wentworth, stamping his foot on the floor, and turning livid.
Emily burst into tears, and dropped into a chair.