“No, Dudley!” the woman wailed beseechingly. “Spare me these reproaches! I cannot bear them—and least of all from you. I have been foolish—very foolish, I admit. Had you been my husband I should have been a different woman, leading a quiet and happy life, but as I am now—I—” She burst into a torrent of tears without finishing her confession.
“If you acknowledge what I have said to be the truth, Claudia, we are agreed, and more need not be said,” he observed, when, a few moments later, she had grown calm again.
“You are tired of me, Dudley,” she declared, suddenly raising her head and looking straight into his eyes. “We have been—close friends, shall I say? long enough. You have found some other woman who pleases you—a woman more charming, more graceful than myself. Now, confess to me the truth,” she said with deep earnestness. “I will not upbraid you,” she went on in a hard, strained voice. “No, I—I will be silent. I swear I will. Now, Dudley, tell me the truth.”
“I have met no woman more beautiful than yourself, Claudia,” Chisholm answered in a deep tone. “You have no rival within my heart.”
“I don’t believe it!” she cried fiercely. “You could never reproach me as you have done unless some woman who is my enemy had prompted you. Your father has written to you, that I know; but you are not the man to be the slave of paternal warnings. No,” she said harshly, “it is a woman who has drawn you away from me. I swear not to rest till I have found out the truth!”
When she showed her griffes, this bright capricieuse, the leader of the smartest set in town, was, he knew, merciless.
But at that moment he only smiled at her sudden outburst of jealousy.
“I have already spoken the truth,” he said. “I have never yet lied to you.”
“Never, until to-day,” was her sharp retort. “I suppose you think that, because of your responsible official position, you ought now to develop into the old fogey, marry some scraggy girl with red hair and half a million, and settle down to sober statesmanship and the Carlton. As you have found the future partner of your joys, you think it high time to drop an undesirable acquaintance.”
Her words were hard ones, spoken in a tone of biting sarcasm. In an instant his countenance grew serious.