But the same instant, in a voice perfectly calm-- "Is there anything else you would like to sing, Mr.Helmer ?" she said.
"Or--" Here she ceased, with the slightest possible choking--it was only of anger--in the throat.
Tom's was a sympathetic nature, especially where a pretty woman was in question.

He forgot entirely that she had given quite as good, or as bad, as she received, and was hastening to say something foolish, imagining he had looked upon the sorrows of a lovely and unhappy wife and was almost in her confidence, when Sepia entered the room, with a dark glow that flashed into dusky radiance at sight of the handsome Tom.

She had noted him on the night of the party, and remembered having seen him at the merrymaking in the old hall of Durnmelling, but he had not been introduced to her.

A minute more, and they were sitting together in a bay-window, blazing away at each other like two corvettes, though their cartridges were often blank enough, while Hesper, never heeding them, kept her place by the chimney, her gaze transferred from the fire to the novel she had sent for from her bedroom..