“Yes,” said Evereld, “I can quite fancy that. And I know if I hadn’t been horrid and suspicious things would have been different this morning. Please don’t say anything about it to Ralph, I don’t want him to know that I had been crying.” Macneillie could not resist teasing her a little. “What! I thought you were a model husband and wife, and had no secrets from each other! And here you are pledging me to silence!” She laughed at his comical expression, and felt much better for laughing. “We do tell each other everything as a rule, but this could only vex him and make things uncomfortable all round, and just now he is studying so very hard for his first attempt at Hamlet. I really believe he is more Hamlet than himself; he seems to think of him all day long and even in his sleep he has taken to muttering bits of his part. It’s quite uncanny to hear him in the dead of night!” She was quite her cheerful self again and nothing more was said as to what had passed that morning. Macneillie however turned things over in his mind and that evening at the theatre he reaped the harvest of a quiet eye, and began to understand the precise state of affairs. CHAPTER XXXIV “O for a heart from self set free And doubt and fret and care, Light as a bird, instinct with glee, That fans the breezy air. “O for a mind whose virtue moulds All sensuous fair display, And, like a strong commander, holds A world of thoughts in sway!” Professor Blackie |What has happened to Evereld?” said Ivy that morning, as Myra graciously cut out for her a second pattern of the sleeve which she wanted. “I have been to see her and it was like hurling words at a stone wall. I couldn’t have imagined that she would ever be like that.” “Oh, you have just been in there,” said Myra reflectively. “I am sorry you went to-day.” “What has come over her?” said Ivy. “She seemed almost to dislike me.” “I think she was a little upset by something she had heard,” said Myra, handing the pattern to her visitor. “What can she have heard that should make her different to me?” said Ivy hotly. “Well, my dear,” said Myra with a swift glance at her, “you know people are beginning to say that you run after Mr. Denmead, and I daresay she knows that you cared for him when we were in Scotland. Though very innocent she can hardly help putting two and two together, and it is but natural that she should resent your making friends with her for the sake of being able to go about constantly with her husband. You made a mistake in professing such a very violent friendship for her.”