AC dBooks

"
I need not say how this moved me, being where I was, in that uncongenial
company; but by some mischance I left the paper which contained it on
the table in the drawing-room, and on going downstairs after breakfast
next morning I found Alma stretched out in a rocking-chair before the
fire in the hail, smoking a cigarette and reading the report aloud in a
mock heroic tone to a number of the men, including my husband, whose fat
body (he was growing corpulent) was shaking with laughter.
It was as much as I could do to control an impulse to jump down and
flare out at them, but, being lightly shod, I was standing quietly in
their midst before they were aware of my presence.
"Ah," said Alma, with the sweetest and most insincere of her smiles, "we
were just enjoying the beautiful account of your friend's last night in
England."
"So I see," I said, and, boiling with anger underneath, I quietly took
the paper out of her hand between the tips of my thumb and first finger
(as if the contamination of her touch had made it unclean) and carried
it to the fire and burnt it.


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