Page:Peterson Magazine 1869B.pdf/379

344 KATE'S WINTER IN WASHINGTON. “What is it?” she asked, and her voice and her angry eyes cut his heart like a knife. “I should have listened just as quickly without your swearing.”

“Don't speak in that way, Kate!” he exclaimed, in a tone that trembled with suppressed feeling; but it sounded go abrupt and quick that Kate mistook the emotion for anger.

“If you wish to hold any conversation with me, I should advise you to adopt a different manner,” she said, with the same forced calmness. “I do not choose to be insulted or made ridiculous.”

“Oh, Kate! is it really you speaking!” he faltered.

“Really myself, Mr, Everett; and I am rapidly discovering which is the real you—a very different man from the person I thought I knew.”

He could not trust his voice for a moment; besides, he remembered that they could not stand so near the crowd and do private theatricals, He led her away through the dancing- room into a little boudoir which chanced to be empty, and Circe and her fiend, standing side by side, saw them go.

Phil Marsden muttered o naughty word, and Circe laughed outright.

“Afraid of a reconciliation!” sneered she.

“You know very well it would upset all our plans,” he answered, in a low tone.

“And I understand all your private ones, too,” she answered, with a gracious smile, meant for any lookers-on, and a gleam in her eyes intended for Phil's special benefit.

“Don't talk melodrama,” said he, impatiently.

“Nonsense, as if I didn’t see! You have gone crazy over the creature’s golden hair and white shoulder.”

“Now come up with your jealousy and spoil everything,” he muttered. I can tell you one thing, if we fail in this plan, and don’t make anything out of old Wallingford, you will have to shift for yourself, for I shalt be done up.”

“Jealous of you! Run away with the girl, if you please, and she is fool enough to go.”

“Yes, you would like playing the part of the injured wife, wouldn’t you, Mrs, Lily?”

“Very much; I dare say I could make it pay.”

“Don’t let's quarrel,” returned he, quietly. “We always ruin things if we both get angry at once.”

“Well said, Philip, my king—to hear is to obey! Speak your commands.”

“Don’t give that fellow a chance to talk her cover, that's all.”

“No danger. Your white dove—was that what you named her? has a fine temper of her own. But I'll manage to be in at the death. You go and dance—it's no time for you to meddle.”

Kate and Everett stood in the dimly-lighted chamber, with the guy music and the laughing murmurs of the crowd surging in from the ballroom and -

“What did you mean, Kate? How have you found me so different from the man you believed me?"

“Every way!” she exclaimed, passionately. “You have taught me to doubt your word: see that you are deceitful, imperious, exacting, determined that I shall be a slave to your whims, while you enjoy the largest liberty——”

“Go on,” he said, when she paused in her insane tirade, “you can't have exhausted all your powers of invective yet.”

“Let this end,” cried she, stung into fresh anger. “No two people were ever so utterly unsuited to each other. You haven’t an ambition in the world; to flirt, dance, be a mere man of society in enough for you. I want more than that,”

“What more?"

“So much more than you could offer that it is idle to talk of it.”

“You are serious? You wish to part for ever?”

“Is it any good to keep up this farce of an engagement? You say that I make you wretched; I know I am so—let it end. We will each go on alone,”

“And this is a woman’s faith, a woman's truth!” he exclaimed, “So be it—let it end! Go your own way—I warn you where it will lead! Trust those people—as sure as you and I live they will bring you into trouble and disgrace.”

“Do you dare to use a word like that in connection with my name?” she cried. “You have reminded me that I am a woman, as if no other word could express your contempt. At least, remember that because I am one, I am powerless to avenge an insult.”

“You know that I had no intention of insulting you, Kate! You have tried me beyond the possibility of forbearance—”

“And you have repaid me in return—we are quits every way.”

“At least, remember my last words—beware of those people! If possible, the woman is worse than——”

“Stop! Don't come from whispering compliments in her ear to hissing slanders into mine.”

«Remember, I warned you—I can do nothing more. You are wild, mad! When this insanity

�