Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/227

 Madame from the unwilling shelter of Edward's arms called him a brute and a monster and boasted how for weeks with Edward as her guilty partner she had deceived him.

It may be that she really wanted to end her long and happy relationship with Beaulieu and be driven from the house with Edward, who thereafter would be in honor bound to support her and care for her. It is more likely that she had simply lost her temper and preferred to make as many people as possible miserable and did not at the moment care what happened.

Edward was in a state of horrible embarrassment. He wished that the floor would open and swallow him, that he had never been born. Embarrassment began slowly to give place to disgust. The cold of the stone floor was rising through his feet and ankles. And then suddenly and without other warning he did the very wisest thing that he could have done under the circumstances. He screwed his eyes into two knots, opened his mouth wide, tipped his head back and then, with incredible violence, sneezed. He tried to speak and sneezed again.

The swollen veins in Beaulieu's face shrank and he began to speak in a hoarse, jerky way.

"You once worked this game on me," he said, "but you shan't work it on him."