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Show HER RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION. The Story of a Cruel Rebuke. ! "How dared he I Again. Haw dared he!" That was the question which Mrs. Bullivant kept ! asking herself over and over, with hot throbs of i anger, as her maid was dressing her for dinner. i What had she done? she thpught to herself. How had she ever, oven for one instant, overstepped over-stepped the, lino of the strictest proprieties, that he or. any man should presume to address such requests no, not requests, either, now she came to think of it, but commands! to her? Never in the whole thirty-five years of her life could she remember having felt so indignant and insulted. in-sulted. Although she had been married ten years to a little fat moneybag with a bald head and projecting pro-jecting eyes, twenty-live years her senior, and was herself now in the full splendor of her beau ! tiful womanhood, never had one whisper been i breathed, even by the dearest of her friends, ' against the placid steadfastness of her wifely devotion. de-votion. And now! oh, it was too maddening. He, moreover, was such a mere boy surely not more than twenty-one or twenty-two just out of Harvard, and a tutor of all ridiculous occupa- j I tions teaching the young Jones cub3 their Greek B grammar. She had seen him here and there, at I tennis parties, at teas and on the golf links, I and had admired, as every one with an eye for I form admired, his broad, upright, athletic figure, I his curly brown hair, his springy walk and mas-I mas-I terful, straightforward glance but, of course, I merely in a maternal way. 9 And then, last night, at the concert in the 9 village hall, to which she had gone with a party 9 of friends after dinner, it was certainly quite an 9 accident that in the suffocating heat she had 9 been glad to seize a seat next to an open window, 9 and idly let her bare arm lie on the narrow 9 stone sill. in the cool air. Was it her fault that this impertinent young 9 wau had happened to stroll along the path out-9 out-9 wide, enjoying his cigarette In the scented sum-9 sum-9 irer dark, and had taken up his stand there be-9 be-9 low by the window hidden from all but her? 9 Surely not. And when he took hold of her fin-9 fin-9 gers in his iron grasp, which 'she was absolutely 9 incapable of resisting, was it not the most ju-9 ju-9 diclous thing to remain .icily immovable, and 9 thus show him how utterly mistaken he had been 9 in his estimate of her, rather than to struggle and 9 make a "scene, and got the silly boy into serious j9 trouble with his employers? 9 And then, again, with the ignorance of tho 9 young, when he had misinterpreted her generous 9 forbearance, and had the incredible self-assur-9 nnce to fondle her arm with his cheek, and even 9 kiss her soft, satiny skin high up inside the el-9 el-9 bow over and over again, was it not wiser to 9 suffer -ovon this indignity in silence, .than to set 9 tho whole audience in a panic by screaming? At least so she thought at the time, and this 9 was the reward of her noble self-sacrifice! A 9 note in tho evening mail! 1 ' My dutiful one (it ran); 9 Bo in tho summer houso undor the oak tree B tonight -at half-past nlnd sharp. ' Mind you wear 9 evening dross; for I must have your maddeningly ,1 lovely arms to kiss again. Put on thick shoos, too; tho grass is wot, and 1 I can't havo you orvtchlng cold, daar PAUL. m She lia'dnovor hoard of a parallel piece of in- Solent presumption! And now she was making 1 up her mind how to administer tho most impreg-1 impreg-1 sive lesson possible to this .sufferable young amorist. ' M She. had thought of showing tho note to hor husband, and sending him to the rendezvous with a horsewhip, but, remembering in time the young scoundrel's record of physical prowess, she be-, lieved It would be kinder to Mr. Bullivant to keep the incident altogether from his knowledge. Then it had seemed that if she, herself, in all the arctic purity of an offended and outraged wife, were to go and tell him with quiet dignity dig-nity exactly how despicable he looked in hor eyes, and, afterward, spurn him, conscience-stricken conscience-stricken and confounded, from her presence, she Would, perhaps, make the most lasting impression or. him, and possibly turn him back into the path of virtue. But, on further consideration, she refused to give him even the satisfaction of knowing he had brought her out of the house and away from her husband's company by his iinpudent letter. She would die rattier than lot him say that sho had kept an assignation with, him, oven for such a worthy purpose; besides if he could be so forgetful of decency as he had been the night before with a hundred people close at hand, what might she not have to fear, alone with him, at the bottom of a long deserted garden, in the black darkness? She shuddered with terror at the mere idea. No, there was a bettor way of mooting his t : jjH case. Vjj9 No one should go there to meet him! Let him t aH wait as long- as ho llkod and cool Ills heels in the 'fHI wet grass, until he realized the depth of her SH disdain. Yos, lot him stay there; alone, all night, '(':iH ir ho wanted to, until .Understood that a woman t'i'JjH may be beautiful, Vet friiq, and, no skeleton, yet '!H chaste. '.JhH That was the best the only way. Certainly ;T:rafl And she smiled with satisfaction at the thought h'iifl of the justness and completeness of the re- Iiiifl9 buff. v",f9 And as Mrs. Bullivant, hor course thoroughly ! l9 and immovably decided, let the question pass limn from hor mind as settled, she found, to her sur- "j'lF9 nrlse and, naturally, annoyance that in her ab- 'l9 sent-mindedness she must have given strangely lijfivj wrong orders to her maid for though she was -THilffl dining alone with her husband", she had actually permitted the girl to attire her in full evening tjii dress, and, above all, in a filmy. laoo dinner bodice 'jlSfn of -scanty proportions, so deliclously frank in its IfflPl Intimate revelations, and so daringly Gallic in its Wtim docolletage, that her husband had absolutely for- ifl bidden her to wear it. $ Iriitatedly dismissing the servant, and finding there was now no time in. which to change her. corsage, she flung her lace cape about the splendid splen-did whiteness of her arms and shoulders, pinning .t together high up on the nock with a diamond brooch, so as to spare the somewhat short-sighted Mr. Bulllvant',s feelings; and then, going into the dressing-room, where some thirty pairs of shoes of all hinds from dainty pearl-embroidered satin trifles to high-laced shooting boots-were boots-were ranged in their trees against the wall, she hurriedly, as the dinner bell rang took up the first pair which came to . her . hand, which, strangely enough, happened to be a stout pair of English walking boots, with soles a quarter of an inch thick; and hastily slipping them on, she laced them up, and ran down stairs .to the dining room d,oor, whore her beloved .husband was awaiting her, grumbling, at her tardiness. G. M. Acklom, in Town .Topics. |