The Face of Rosenfeld — page 189: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

182 THH FACH OF ROSENFEL., In truth, as the moments went on and this viva- cious and fascinating personage continued to discuss the stupid affairs of daily life, with a piquancy and anima- tion that made them for the time seem interesting, Ellen found it hard to retain her hold on the certain fact that this was the same woman who had shivered the costly ornament to atoms on the marble floor. Mrs. Forsythe seemed to have set before herself the one object of mak- ing herself agreeable to her new acquaintances. She admired, openly and ecstatically admired, Maxey’s wife. and declared that if she had been a man she should have fallen in love with her herself. She praised Maxey’s taste as an artist, and went into raptures over some of his pictures, with which he had ornamented the walls of his parlor. She even—‘‘ such,” thought Ellen, ‘‘is her boldness and effrontery ”—attempted to become a wor- shiper at the shrine of the artist’s sister, but Miss Maxey met all her attempts to win her over with an icy reticence which more than once aroused the latent fire in the widow’s eyes. Doctor Lamar, usually so gay and converenee taal in the artist’s rooms, hardly uttered a word. He sat be- side Mrs. Forsythe on the sofa, as grave and: serious as if he had been assisting at a funeral. ‘The difference was so marked and so significant that all three of his friends were impressed by the fact. It was the last mat- ter, under the circumstances, that either Julian Maxey or his young wife would have thought of mentioning in his presence, but EHllen somehow felt that she had a bat- tle to fight with an unscrupulous woman, and that any means were justifiable. She took advantage of the opportunity afforded her by this fact to plant a covert thorn in the breast of her enemy.