She was a mimic in the music-halls."
"The deuce she was!"
He stood looking very grave and puzzled for a minute, then he stared hard
at his wife.
"What did she mimic?"
"I don't know--people."
Again there was a silence. Then he said--
"I say, I don't know that I want you to sing at that affair to-morrow."
"But I must. Why not?"
He hesitated, shifting from one foot to the other almost like a great
boy.
"I don't know what she's up to," he answered at last.
"Miss Schley?"
"Ah!"
Lady Holme felt her heart beat faster. Was her husband going to open up a
discussion of the thing that had been turning her life to gall during
these last weeks--his flirtation, his /liaison/--if it were a /liaison/;
she did not know--with the American? The woman who had begun to idealise
Fritz and the woman who was desperately jealous of him both seemed to be
quivering within her.
"Do you mean--?" she began.
She stopped, then spoke again in a quiet voice.
"Do you mean that you think Miss Schley is going to do something unusual
at the concert tomorrow?"
"I dunno. She's the devil."
There was a reluctant admiration in his voice, as there always is in the
voice of a man when he describes a woman as gifted with infernal
attributes, and this sound stung Lady Holme. It seemed to set that angel
upon whom she was calling in the dust, to make of that angel a puppet, an
impotent, even a contemptible thing.
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