Revelations of a Wife | Page 5

coming toward us with hand outstretched.
I realized the truth even before she spoke. It was not I at whom she was smiling, but Dicky. She was Dicky's friend!
"Why, bless my soul, if it isn't the Dicky-bird," she cried so loudly that everybody turned to look at us. She took my hand. "I suppose you are the bride Dicky's been hiding away so jealously." She looked me up and down as if I were on exhibition and turning to Dicky said. "Pretty good taste, Dicky, but I don't imagine that your old friends will see much of you from now on."
"That's where you're wrong, Lil," returned Dicky easily. "We're going to have you all up some night soon."
"See that you do," she returned, tweaking his ear as we passed on to our seats.
I had not spoken during the conversation. I had shaken the hand of the woman and smiled at her.
But over and over again in my brain this question was revolving:
"Who is this unpleasant woman who calls my husband 'Dicky-bird,' and who is called 'Lil' by him?"
But I love the very air of the theatre, so as Dicky and I sank into the old-fashioned brocaded seats I resolutely put away from my mind all disturbing thoughts of the woman in the lobby who appeared on such good terms with my husband, and prepared to enjoy every moment of the evening.
"Well done, Madge," Dicky whispered mischievously, as, after we had been seated, I let my cloak drop from my shoulders without arising. "You wriggled that off in the most approved manner."
"I ought to," I whispered back. "I've watched other women with envious attention during all the lean years, when I wore tailor-mades to mill and to meeting."
Dicky squeezed my hand under cover of the cloak. "No more lean years for my girl if I can help it." he murmured earnestly.
Dicky appeared to know a number of people in the audience. A half-dozen men and two or three women bowed to him. He told me about each one. Two were dramatic critics, others artist and actor friends. Each one's name was familiar to me through the newspapers.
"You'll know them all later, Madge," he said, and I felt a glow of pleasure in the anticipation of meeting such interesting people.
Dicky opened his program, and I idly watched the people between me and the stage. A few seats in front of us to the left I caught sight of the woman who had claimed Dicky's acquaintance in the lobby. She was signaling greetings to a number of acquaintances in a flamboyant fashion. She would bow elaborately, then lift her hands together as if shaking hands with the person she greeted.
"Who is she, Dicky?" I tried to make my voice careless. "I did not catch her name when you introduced us."
"You'll probably see enough of her so you won't forget it," returned Dicky, grinning. "She's one of the busiest little members of the 'Welcome to Our City Committee' in the set I train most with. She won't rest till you've met all the boys and girls and been properly lionized. She's one of the best little scouts going, and, if she'd cut out the war paint and modulate that Comanche yell she calls her voice there would be few women to equal her for brains or looks."
"But you haven't told me yet what her name is," I persisted.
"Well, in private life she's Mrs. Harry Underwood--that's Harry with her--but she's better known all over the country as the cleverest producer of illustrated jingles for advertising we have. Remember that Simple Simon parody for the mincemeat advertisement we laughed over some time ago, and I told you I knew the woman who did it? There she is before you," and Dicky waved his hand grandiloquently.
"Lillian Gale!" I almost gasped the name.
"The same," rejoined Dicky, and turned again to his program, while I sat in amazed horror, with all my oldtime theories crumbling around me.
For I had read of Lillian Gale and her married troubles. I knew that Harry Underwood was her second husband and that she had been divorced from her first spouse after a scandal which has been aired quite fully in the newspapers. She had not been proved guilty, but her skirts certainly had been smirched by rumor. According to the ideas which had been mine, Dicky should have shrunk from having me ever meet such a woman, let alone planning to have me on terms of intimacy with her.
What should I do?
When the curtain went down on the first act I turned to Dicky happily, eager to hear his comments and filled with a throng of thoughts to wipe away any remembrance from his mind of the unhappiness that had promised to mar my evening, and which I feared he had read in my