Page:Dale - A Marriage Below Zero.djvu/199

Rh with those fine feathers which are correctly supposed to make fine birds.

Her words gave me a shock. I looked in the glass. Yes, I was feverish. My cheeks were burning. There was a hectic red upon each.' Evidently I had not succeeded in schooling myself into composure.

"What can I do, Marie?" I asked helplessly. "I do not want to have red cheeks."

Marie looked rather surprised, but her French experience thus appealed to, did me excellent service. At the end of ten minutes the color of my countenance was beautifully normal. The hectic spots had disappeared, at least from sight.

I went down to the dining room to eat my hateful dinner with Arthur. He was in a hopelessly conventional good humor. I succeeded—admirably, I thought—in emulating his complacence. To show the effect of my determination to keep from my husband any suspicion of my thoughts and actions, I chatted pleasantly upon a variety of subjects—the hackneyed aggressiveness of Lord Randolph Churchill; the new comic opera at the Savoy; the coming concert at St.