(Married!)
She seemed to be speaking to everyone, and everyone seemed to be crowding
around her. He couldn't go up like everyone else, because the awful and
bony young lady was talking hard at him and heightened her charms with a
smile that took up two-fifths of her face, and wrinkled all the rest.
Her name was Lome--Maude Lome. He knew that she must be a relative without
being told, because otherwise she wouldn't have been invited at all.
Anyone could divine that.
"Oh, isn't dear Betty just lovely?" this fearful freak said. "I think
she's just too lovely for anything! She's my cousin, you know; we're often
mistaken for one another."
"I can well believe it," said Jack, heavily, not ceasing to stare beyond
as he said it.
(Married!)
"Oh, you're flattering me! Because she's ever so much prettier than I am,
and I know it."
He didn't reply. It had suddenly come over him to wonder whether there
ever had been an authentic case of heartbreak. Because he had the most
terrible ache right in his left side!
(Married! Married!)
"But, then," Miss Lome continued, "I'm younger than she is. Her being
married makes her seem young, but she's really twenty-four. I'm only
twenty."
He shut his eyes, and then opened them. He wished he hadn't come here, and
then grew shivery to think that he might have happened not to; and all the
while that awful twisting and wrenching at his heart was getting worse and
worse.
(Married! Married! Married!)
Burnett came up just then with a man wearing a monocle and presented him
to Denham, and forthwith handed the bony cousin to his safe-keeping.
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