"You have quieted her," she found a chance to murmur in Claire's ear, sure that the indefinite nature of the pronoun would not be misunderstood. "She is still looking excited and queer, but she has almost relapsed into silence. Perhaps she really wanted to poison you, and feels hurt at the lost opportunity." Mrs. Diggs had had several sips of good wine, and felt her anxiety lessened; her jocose ebullition was the result of steadied nerves. "I never saw you so _spirituelle_, Claire," she went on. "You have said at least eight delicious things. I have them all mentally booked, my dear. When we are next alone together I will remind you of them." "Pray don't," Claire answered, putting the words into a still lower aside than her friend's. "I shall have hard enough work to forget, then. I shall want _only_ to forget, too." She had just finished this faint-spoken sentence when one of the servants handed her a note. As she glanced at its superscription the thought passed through her mind that it might be some dire and alarming message from her husband. But the next instant a flash of recollection assailed her. She remembered the handwriting--or, at least, in this festive and distracting environment, she more than half believed that she did so. Her hands, while she swiftly tore open the envelope, were dropped upon her lap. She read several lines of a note, and then crushed it, quickly and covertly. As her eyes met those of Mrs. Diggs she had a sense that she was becoming ghastly pale. "What is it?" whispered her friend. "Oh, nothing," she afterward remembered saying. The servant was still close at her elbow. She turned her head toward him. "Let her wait," she said. "Tell her that I will see her quite soon." The whole affair had been very rapid of occurrence. No one present had given a sign of having observed it. 'If I had only not grown so pale,' she thought. The paper was still clutched in her left hand, and she had thrust this half-way beneath the table-cover. With her right hand she began to make a play of eating something from the plate before her, as she addressed the lady on her other side. What she said must have been something very gracious and pleasant, for the lady smiled and answered affably, while the servants glided, the music sounded, the delightful feast progressed. Everything had grown dim and whirling to Claire. And yet she had already realized perfectly that Mrs. Lee was striking her blow. It had come, sudden, cruel, direct. Her blurred mind, her weakened and chilling body, did not leave that one fact any the less clear. She understood just what it was, why it was, and whence it was.