“Completing your head of Mrs. Talboys, I suppose, before you start for Naples.”
“You don’t mean to say that she has told you all about it,” and he turned away from his work, and looked up into our faces with a comical expression, half of fun and half of despair.
“Every word of it,” said I. “When you want a lady to travel with you, never ask her to get up so early in winter.”
“But, O’Brien, how could you be such an ass?” said Mackinnon. “As it has turned out, there is no very great harm done. You have insulted a respectable middle-aged woman, the mother of a family, and the wife of a general officer, and there is an end of it;—unless, indeed, the general officer should come out from England to call you to account.”
“He is welcome,” said O’Brien, haughtily.
“No doubt, my dear fellow,” said Mackinnon; “that would be a dignified and pleasant ending to the affair. But what I want to know is this;—what would you have done if she had agreed to go?”
“He never calculated on the possibility of such a contingency,” said I.
“By heavens, then, I thought she would like it,” said he.
“And to oblige her you were content to sacrifice yourself,” said Mackinnon.
“Well, that was just it. What the deuce is a fellow to do when a woman goes on in that way. She told me down there, upon the old race course you know, that matrimonial bonds were made for fools and slaves. What was I to suppose that she meant by that? But to make all sure, I asked her what sort of a fellow the General was. ‘Dear old man,’ she said, clasping her hands together. ‘He might, you know, have been my father.’ ‘I wish he were,’ said I, ‘because then you’d be free.’ ‘I am free,’ said she, stamping on the ground, and looking up at me as much as to say that she cared for no one. ‘Then,’ said I, ‘accept all that is left of the heart of Wenceslaus O’Brien,’ and I threw myself before her in her path. ‘Hand,’ said I, ‘I have none to give, but the blood which runs red through my veins is descended from a double line of kings.’ I said that because she is always fond of riding a high horse. I had gotten close under the wall, so that none of you should see me from the tower.”