Matters went from bad to worse: for Miss Burgoyne, finding nothing else that could account for his habitual depression of spirits, his occasional irritability and obvious indifference towards herself, made bold to assume that he was secretly, even if unconsciously, fretting over Nina's absence; and her jealousy grew more and more angry and vindictive, until it carried her beyond all bounds. For now she began to say disparaging or malicious things about Miss Ross, and that without subterfuge. At last there came a climax. She had sent for him (for he did not invariably go into her room before the beginning of the last act, as once he had done), and, as she was still in the inner apartment, he took a chair, and stretched out his legs, and flicked a spot or two of dust from his silver-buckled shoes. "What hour did you get home _this_ morning?" she called to him, in rather a saucy tone. "I don't know exactly." "And don't care. You are leading a pretty life," she went on, rather indiscreetly, for Jane was with her. "Distraction! Distraction from what? You sit up all night; you eat supper at all hours of the morning; you get dyspepsia and indigestion; and of course you become low-spirited--then there must be distraction. If you would lead a wholesome life you wouldn't need any distraction." "Oh, don't worry!" he said, impatiently. "What's come over that Italian friend of yours--that Miss Ross?" "I don't know." "You've never heard anything of her?" "No--nothing." "Don't you call that rather cool on her part? You introduce her to this theatre, you get her an engagement, you befriend her in every way, and all of a sudden she bolts, without a thank you!" "I presume Miss Ross is the best judge of her own actions," said he, stiffly. "Oh, you needn't be so touchy!" said Grace Thornhill, as she came forth in all the splendor of her bridal array, and at once proceeded to the mirror. "But I can quite understand your not liking having been treated in that fashion. People often are deceived in their friends, aren't they? And there's nothing so horrid as ingratitude. Certainly she ought to have been grateful to you, considering the fuss you made about her--the whole company remarked it!" He did not answer; he did not even look her way; but there was an angry cloud gathering on his brows. "No; very ungrateful, I call it," she continued, in the same dangerously supercilious tone. "You take up some creature you know nothing about and befriend her, and even make a spectacle of yourself through the way you run after her, and all at once she says, 'Good-bye? I've had enough of you'--and that's all the explanation you have!" "Oh, leave Miss Ross alone, will you?" he said, in accents that might have warned her. Perhaps she was unheeding; perhaps she was stung into retort; at all events, she turned and faced him.