Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/319

Rh change of looks, imagined them talking of her, "Does she mind?" "Not so much as I expected"; oh, the torturing espionage of family life. If she could only be quite alone! She recalled the scene. From her bedroom window she had seen the telegraph boy, had thought nothing of it, telegrams were so frequent. "Effie! Effie!" First her youngest brother, wide-eyed, observant, when the room-door burst open; then her father, half-understanding, but innately unsympathetic for "love-affairs," gratified, too, at the remembrance of him, careless or unconscious of the intolerable under-meaning of the message. Something had told her what it was, what the pink scrawl contained; she had felt a burning rebellion, a hard hatred of somebody or something.

"A telegram? from whom?" Her voice was sharp and cold. "From Luttrell?" This was one of the things she loathed—that she called him "Luttrell," tout court; her morbid sense of humour saw the painful absurdity of it—to speak so of a man you cared for! Incredible! yet she did it. Was anything in life what you had once fancied it?

"From Luttrell?" Bravado had forced the name from her—and if it should not be from him? Even now she could recall the lash of the stinging thought.

"Yes—from Luttrell, Funny fellow! fancy his thinking of sending it! Like to see it?"

She had taken it with a laugh at the "funny fellow," had read it

"So he's really married. Well, she's a pretty girl, and a clever girl; I daresay he'll be very happy. A very clever girl."

How often, in her wayward moments, she had laughed with Luttrell over the "canonisation" of the newest fiancée or bride! "She had fulfilled the whole duty of woman!" she used to declare with ironic grandiosity, and he used to smile admiringly at her