He did not feel that he had any excuse for upbraiding Rachel now, and he did not do it. But he had to put great restraint upon himself not to do it.
He got out of the carriage at his club, shutting the door with a bang behind him, and while his wife drove home by herself in a state of semi-consciousness, he went in to quarrel with some of his old friends who chanced to require his opinion upon the political situation. Politics, he promptly gave them to understand, were beneath his notice, likewise the people who concerned themselves therein. He wouldn't touch one of them with a pair of tongs. It wasn't for gentlemen and clubmen to mix themselves up with a lot of rogues and vagabonds. Let them alone and be hanged to them. That was what respectable people did in America. If Americans didn't care what riff-raff represented them, why should they?
As for the colony, if it liked to be dragged in the dirt—if it preferred, of its own free will, to go to the devil—let it, for all to him.
And so he worked off his savage temper harmlessly, and appeared in his own drawing-room at seven o'clock, irreproachably spruce, and with a flower in his button-hole, looking jaunty and amiable, as if nothing had happened.
Rachel, when he arrived, was sitting alone in the midst of her wealth and splendour, waiting for him.
She rose as he entered and went to meet him, looking lovely in her favourite black velvet, with red geraniums in her hair; and she laid her hand on his sleeve, and lifted a sad but peaceful face. "Kiss me, Graham," she said gently.
He put his arms round her at once.
"Dear little woman!" he responded. "I understand. I am not angry with you. It's all right. We won't say any more about it."
And he led her to the dining-room and placed her "at the head of the table," which was her social throne; and he plied her with dainty viands and rare wines with a fussy solicitude that was highly edifying to the servants who waited upon them, by way of showing her that he forgave her.
He was much impressed by his own large magnanimity; and what was more to the purpose, so in her unselfish heart, was she. They spent the evening together, tête-à-tête by the fireside (for it was cold when the storm was over), in the most domestic manner, planning new schemes for the garden and for the arrangement of a pet cabinet of blue china; and when Rachel went to bed, lighting her way about the great corridors and staircases with a candle that her husband had lit for her, she felt that he was helping her to make a fair start upon the weary road which stretched, plain and straight—but, oh, so flat and bare!—before her.