Helen stiffened, her hand flew to her breast as if she had received a mortal wound. This trumpeting note of mirth was as much a part of her experience as her husband’s kisses had been. Her lips tightened, her eyes wide with horror flew this way and that, scanning every face. Then they fell again upon the dark woman whom she had forgotten in this sudden anguish. Instantly she felt the red lash of this woman’s smile, as if she had reached across the space between them to strike a blow. There was contempt and recognition in the smoldering black eyes--no defiance, but triumph. The man facing her at this table with his back to Helen caught it, flirted his head around to find the object of it--and looked straight into the eyes of his wife! For one instant they held this silent interview with each other in that crowded room. Then the woman struck her hands together with a sharp, little smack, and let out a gale of laughter, too keen, too high in this decent place. Every head was turned toward her, every eye fell upon her in polite amazement. Still she laughed. And still George Cutter’s eyes followed his wife. For Helen had risen at the first note of that stinging laugh and had made her way blindly from the room. “What happened?” asked a fat man, rolling a pop-eyed look across the table at his wife. “I didn’t see anything,” she replied, taking her soup with the absorption of an innocent person. “Who was the pale lady? Didn’t you see her going out?” “A lot of people are coming in and going out,” his wife returned, skinning the bottom of her soup plate with her spoon. “And there’s the one that did the laugh,” he said, nodding at the woman. “She looks like a jade; probably is one,” his wife announced, with one appraising look. “Fellow with her is all in then--head down, knees sprung, tail drooping. He’s come a cropper and knows it. Look at him, Lily.” The old Lily looked at the man before the “jade” indifferently, then passed the look on to the service door from whence cometh, or should come, the next course of this very good dinner. “Henry, you are a born scandalmonger,” she said reproachfully. “No, it’s an acquired taste, but I have it; and if ever I saw a fine scene in a matrimonial melodrama, I’ve just witnessed one. Pale lady’s the wife, t’other one’s the gallant gal bandit, and the man’s the victim,” he snickered. Before these guests had finished dining, Helen Cutter had left the Inn.