"At any rate you had better be away from her."
"I am going,—this evening. Shall I walk on, half a stage, at once, without any dinner? I wish you had heard the kind of things she said to me. You would not have thought that I had gone to walk with her for my own pleasure."
"Have you not deserved them?"
"I think not;—but nevertheless I bore them. A woman, of course, can say what she pleases. There's Docimer,—I hope he won't call me a coward."
Mr. Docimer came out on the terrace, on which the two were standing, looking as sour as death. "He is going by the diligence to Innspruck this afternoon," said Mrs. Docimer.
"Why did he come? A man with a grain of feeling would have remained away."
"Now, Docimer," said Frank, "pray do not make yourself unpleasant. Your sister has been abusing me all the morning like a pickpocket, and your wife looks at me as though she would say just as much if she dared. After all, what is it I have done that you think so wicked?"
"What will everybody think at home," said Mrs. Docimer, "when they know that you're with us again? What chance is she to have if you follow her about in this way?"
"I shall not follow her very long," said Frank. "My wings will soon be cut, and then I shall never fly again." They were at this time walking up and down the terrace together, and it seemed for awhile that neither of them had another word to say in the matter of the dispute between them. Then Houston went on again in his own defence. "Of course it is all bad," he said. "Of course we have all been fools. You knew it, and allowed it; and have no right to say a word to me."
"We thought that when your uncle died there would have been money," said Docimer, with a subdued growl.