events of his former stay in Boston. Their laughter
and scraps of their reminiscence reached Marcia where
she sat in a feint of listening to Ben Halleck’s
perfunctory account of his college days with her husband,
till she could bear it no longer. She rose abruptly,
and, going to him, she said that it was time to say
good-night. “Oh, so soon!” cried Clara,
mystified and a little scared at the look she saw
on Marcia’s face. “Good night,”
she added coldly.
The assembly hailed this first token of its disintegration
with relief; it became a little livelier; there was
a fleeting moment in which it seemed as if it might
yet enjoy itself; but its chance passed; it crumbled
rapidly away, and Clara was left looking humbly into
Olive Halleck’s pitiless eyes. “Thank
you for a delightful evening, Miss Kingsbury!
Congratulate you!” she mocked, with an unsparing
laugh. “Such a success! But why didn’t
you give them something to eat, Clara? Those
poor Hubbards have a one-o’clock dinner, and
I famished for them. I wasn’t hungry myself,—we
have a two-o’clock dinner!”
Bartley came home elate from Miss Kingsbury’s
entertainment. It was something like the social
success which he used to picture to himself. He
had been flattered by the attention specially paid
him, and he did not detect the imposition. He
was half starved, but he meant to have up some cold
meat and bottled beer, and talk it all over with Marcia.
She did not seem inclined to talk it over on their
way home, and when they entered their own door, she
pushed in and ran up-stairs. “Why, where
are you going, Marcia?” he called after her.
“To bed!” she replied, closing the door
after her with a crash of unmistakable significance.
Bartley stood a moment in the fury that tempted him
to pursue her with a taunt, and then leave her to
work herself out of the transport of senseless jealousy
she had wrought herself into. But he set his teeth,
and, full of inward cursing, he followed her up-stairs
with a slow, dogged step. He took her in his
arms without a word, and held her fast, while his anger
changed to pity, and then to laughing. When it
came to that, she put up her arms, which she had kept
rigidly at her side, and laid them round his neck,
and began softly to cry on his breast.
“Oh, I’m not myself at all, any more!”
she moaned penitently.
“Then this is very improper—for me,”
said Bartley.
The helpless laughter broke through her lamentation,
but she cried a little more to keep herself in countenance.
“But I guess, from a previous acquaintance with
the party’s character, that it’s really
all you, Marcia. I don’t blame you.
Miss Kingsbury’s hospitality has left me as
hollow as if I’d had nothing to eat for a week;
and I know you’re perishing from inanition.
Hence these tears.”
It delighted her to have him make fun of Miss Kingsbury’s
tea, and she lifted her head to let him see that she
was laughing for pleasure now, before she turned away
to dry her eyes.
