Good evening.

Tonight, I'll be reading chapters 12 and 13 of The Scarlet Pimpa Now by Emma Ortsy.

So let your eyes fall heavy and your breath soften as we settle in for a peaceful night's

sleep.

Chapter 12 The Scrap of Paper

Marguerite suffered intensely, though she laughed and chatted, though she was more admired,

more surrounded, more fetid than any woman there.

She felt like one condemned to death, living her last day upon this earth.

Her nerves were in a state of painful tension, which had increased a hundred fold during

that brief hour which she had spent in her husband's company, between the opera and

the ball.

The short ray of hope that she might find in this good-natured, lazy individual, a valuable

friend and advisor had vanished as quickly as it had come, the moment she found herself

alone with him.

The same feeling of good-humoured contempt which one feels for an animal or a faithful servant

made her turn away with a smile from the man who should have been her moral support

in this heart-rending crisis through which she was passing.

Who should have been her call-headed advisor when feminine sympathy and sentiment tossed

her here there and did her, between her love for her brother, who was far away and in

mortal peril, and horror of the awful service which Sovelin had exacted from her in exchange

for our man's safety.

There he stood, the moral support, the call-headed advisor, surrounded by a crowd of brainless,

...