he
wedding, she had at length betrayed something which her skill and
the intricate enamel of her experience had hitherto, and with entire
success, concealed--namely, the latent vulgarity of the woman. She was
wearing, for the sake of Kings Port, her best behavior, her most knowing
form, and, indeed it was a well-done imitation of the real thing; it
would last through most occasions, and it would deceive most people.
But here was the trouble: she was wearing it; while, through the whole
encounter, Eliza La Heu had worn nothing but her natural and perfect
dignity; yet with that disadvantage (for good breeding, alas!, is at
times a sort of disadvantage, and can be battered down and covered with
mud so that its own fine grain is invisible) Eliza had, after a somewhat
undecisive battle, got in that last frightful peck! But what had led
Hortense, after she had come through pretty well, to lose her temper
and thus, at the finish, expose to Eliza her weakest position? That her
clothes were paid for by a Newport lady who had taken her to Worth, that
her wedding feast was to be paid for by the bridegroom, these were not
facts which Eliza would deign to use as weapons; but she was marrying
inside the doors of Eliza's Kings Port, that had never opened to admit
her before, and she had slipped into putting this chance into Eliza's
hand--and how had she come to do this?

To be sure, my vision had been slow! Hortense had seen, through her
thick veil, Eliza's interest in John in the first minute of her arrival
on the bridge, that minute when John had run up to Eliza after the
automobile had passed over poor General. And Hortense had not revealed
herself at once, because she wanted a longer look at them. Well, she had
got it, and she had got also a look at her affianced John when he was in
the fire-eating mood, and had displayed the conduct appropriate to 1840,
while Charley's display had been so much more modern. And so first she
had prudently settled that awkward phosphate difficulty, and next she
had paid this little visit to Eliza in order to have the pleasure of
telling her in four or five different ways, and driving it in deep, and
turning it round: "Don't you wish you may get him?"

"That's all clear as day," I said to myself. "But what does her loss of
temper mean?"

Eliza was writing at her ledger. The sweetness hadn't entirely gone; it
was too soon for that, and besides, she knew I must be looking at her.

"Couldn't you hav