" She, too,
strained at the sentence, but for an entirely different reason. "I was
looking for him, but I was too late. Bobs, all evening his eyes have
been mad--his mood insane! I heard just his last word or two to you
and--Mr. O'Mara, out there on the lawn. His father, you know--but you
don't think. . . . Barbara, I'm frightened--I'm so terribly
frightened!"
It ended in a little moan of fear. And now, astounded past all belief,
Barbara understood. But before she could speak the seeming need of
woman reassurance, no matter how illogical, was gone. Amazingly, all
in an instant, the living dread disappeared from Miriam's face; she
stiffened and threw back her head with that short laugh which contained
so little of mirth, so much that was hard to translate. And the
Honorable Archibald Wickersham, appearing the same instant at Barbara's
elbow, frowned at its note of derision.
"I've just been warning Barbara," the tall girl was already drawling
with consummate impudence, "that the record of past performances are
all against your finishing the distance without coming a cropper in
these international matrimonial hurdles. Just what is your opinion,
Archibald?"
Wickersham had never liked Miriam Burrell. Now he smiled a trifle
wryly into her insolently uptilted face, without attempting to answer
the question. And during the next dance with Barbara he unburdened
himself, rather positively for him, of his distaste for her.
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