The moment he disappeared, Tom's gaze, which had been fascinated,
sought Hesper. Her lips were shaping the word _brute!_--Tom
heard it with his eyes; her eyes were flashing, and her face was
flushed. But the same instant, in a voice perfectly calm--
"Is there anything else you would like to sing, Mr. Helmer?" she
said. "Or--" Here she ceased, with the slightest possible
choking--it was only of anger--in the throat.
Tom's was a sympathetic nature, especially where a pretty woman
was in question. He forgot entirely that she had given quite as
good, or as bad, as she received, and was hastening to say
something foolish, imagining he had looked upon the sorrows of a
lovely and unhappy wife and was almost in her confidence, when
Sepia entered the room, with a dark glow that flashed into dusky
radiance at sight of the handsome Tom. She had noted him on the
night of the party, and remembered having seen him at the
merrymaking in the old hall of Durnmelling, but he had not been
introduced to her. A minute more, and they were sitting together
in a bay-window, blazing away at each other like two corvettes,
though their cartridges were often blank enough, while Hesper,
never heeding them, kept her place by the chimney, her gaze
transferred from the fire to the novel she had sent for from her
bedroom.
CHAPTER XXV.
MARY'S RECEPTION.
In the afternoon of the same day, now dreary enough, with the
dreariness naturally belonging to the dreariest month of the
year, Mary arrived in the city preferred to all cities by those
who live in it, but the most uninviting, I should imagine, to a
stranger, of all cities on the face of the earth.
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