"
"Don't be a brute," she answered fiercely.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"That sounds a little severe," he remarked.
"Don't take any notice of anything I say tonight," she murmured
softly. "I am a little mad. I think that everything is going against
me! I know that you haven't a grain of sympathy for me--that you would
rather see me suffer than not, and yet you see I give myself away
entirely. Why shouldn't I? Part of it is through you in a way."
"I rather fancied," he remarked, "that up to now--"
"Yes! Of course!" she interrupted, "you saved me from ruin, staved it
off at any rate. And you held over the reckoning! I--I almost wish--"
She paused. Again her eyes were searching his.
"I am a little tired of it all, you see," she continued. "I don't
suppose Lumley and I can ever be the same again since I brought
him--that check. He avoids being alone with me--I do the same with
him. One would think--to watch the people, that the whole transaction
was in the Morning Post. They smile when they see us together, they
grin when they see you with anybody else. It's getting hateful,
Wingrave!"
"I am afraid," he said quietly, "that you are in a nervous,
hypersensitive state. No one else can possibly know of the little
transaction between us, and, so far as I am concerned, there has been
nothing to interfere with your relations with your husband."
"You are right," she answered, "I am losing my nerve.
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