Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/336

 masculinity of their minds. They began at once to lay and to take bets regarding the number of kicks the sufferer would make at space before he perished. However the mere presence of these enemies proved a tonic to my nerves. Having to play a part before those I despised, and to combat their hostility, I was thereby enabled to forget in some degree the peculiar horror of my situation. Before ten o'clock the full number of guests were present, seventeen in all, and I could feel instinctively the zest with which they noted and minutely analysed my most trivial actions. They used a certain tone of sympathetic consideration towards me, which in itself was irony, and carefully refrained from saying a harsh or unkind thing of the rebel, as if to show that they were fully acquainted with my exceeding tenderness towards him, and that their native delicacy would not permit them to distress it. They agreed with the sweetest unanimity that he must be a charming person. Yet it should be recorded to my eternal praise, I think, and as an instance of the mind's strength conquering the weakness of the heart, that I received all these covert taunts without one betrayal of my secret rage. I laughed and jested with the men, and caressed all these dear women with my prettiest phrases. I do not think there was a solitary person present who could have divined that my very heart was bursting with a suppressed agony of terror. Snark might be as faithful as the day, all things might be ordered perfectly, and there be no ground for fear whatever; but I could not divest my mind of