"Nobody interferes with me; I can do just what I like."
He frowned, although he appeared more troubled than annoyed.
"Good gracious!" she exclaimed, with an affected laugh. "What a face of greeting for a man to wear—one might think you were a jailor, come to announce that the day of my execution was at hand."
He dropped her wrist and turned away; she sank negligently into a chair, in the very attitude she had admired in a picture of some forgotten French marchioness, which embellished one of her favorite novels.
"I did not expect a welcome like this," he said, bitterly.
Mrs. Mason looked at him with an expression of surprise which an actress might have envied, and laughed again, not the hearty, ringing merriment of old time, but a low, subdued sound, which did her infinite credit.
"In what have I been amiss?" she asked, coolly.
"I thought, at least, you would be glad to see me."
"Oh, did you? Upon my word, the vanity of mankind is beyond all belief! Certainly, I am glad to see you"—he brightened at that—"quite so," she added, with such carelessness that he looked more annoyed than before.
"This is abominable!" he exclaimed. "Ellen, I would not have believed that you could treat me so."