Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/73

 Polly Emblem; and her frightened face was mottled white and red, the very pattern of my linen, with the gory spots upon it. "Oh, you are hurt, my lady! You are dreadfully hurt, I'm certain!"

"Never you mind that," says I with a very Spartan air; "but just put me in that bodice, and tell me, for your life, whether 'twill conceal this wound or whether 'twill not. For if it doth expose the scar," I announced in a manner highly tragical, while the tears gathered in my eyes, "the reign of my Lady Barbarity is over."

"Even if it does," says Emblem, "we may powder and enamel it, my lady."

"Psha!" cries I, "there is all the difference in the world betwixt a scar and a bad complexion. Art can never obliterate a scar." And here I began to bite my handkerchief in pieces, being no longer able to contain myself.

The ensuing minute was one of the most awful of my life. It seemed as though Emblem—trembling wretch!—would never get that bodice on; but, to do her justice in this affair, and to act kindly towards her character, I must admit that she betrayed a very proper instinct in this matter. That is to say, she was as desperately seized as ever was her mistress with the fear that my peerless shoulders were torn in such a fashion that a low dress would be inadequate to hide their mutilation.

Happily, the pistol-ball had simply run along the skin and had slit it open for an inch or two, quite low down in the shoulder-blade—a mere