gether, and defies him once
again with a cold look. "Why say anything more about it?" she says. "We
do not agree."

"On this subject, at least, we should," says he hotly. "I think your
brother should not have left us in ignorance of Miss Kavanagh's safety
for so many hours. And you," with a sneer, "who are such a martinet for
propriety, should certainly be prepared to acknowledge that he should
not have so regulated his conduct as to make her a subject for unkind
comment to the County. Badly," looking at her deliberately, "as you
think of me, I should not have done it."

"No?" says she. It is a cruel--an unmistakable insulting monosyllable.
And, bearing no other word with it--is the more detestable to the
hearer.

"No," says he loudly. "Sneer as you will--my conscience is at rest
there, so I can defy your suspicions."

"Ah! there!" says she.

"My dear creature," says he, "we all know there is but one villain in
the world, and you are the proud possessor of him--as a husband. Permit
me to observe, however, that a man of your code of honor, and of mine
for the matter of that--but I forget that honor and I have no cousinship
in your estimation--would have chosen to be wet to the skin rather than
imperil the fair name of the girl he loved."

"Has he told you he loved her?"

"Not in so many words."

"Then from what do you argue?"

"My dear, I have told you that you are too much for me in argument! I, a
simple on-looker, have judged merely from an every-day observance of
little unobtrusive facts. If your brother is not in love with Miss
Kavanagh, I think he ought to be. I speak ignorantly, I allow. I am not,
like you, a deep student of human nature. If, too, he did not feel it
his duty to bring her home last night, or else to leave her at Falling
and return here himself, I fail to sympathize with him. I should not
have so failed her."

"Oh but you!" says his wife, with a little contemptuous smile. "You who
are such a paragon of virtue. It would not be expected of you that you
should make such a mistake!"

She has sent forth her dart impulsively, sharply, out of the overflowing
fullness of her angry heart--and when too late, when it has sped past
recall--perhaps repents the speeding!

Such repentances, when felt too late, bring vices in their train; the
desire for good, when chilled, turns to evil. The mind, never idle, if
debarred from the best, leans inevitably toward the worst. Angry with
herself, her very