"Nothing can happen while you are away," he responded, with a smile. "We only vegetate, and wait for your return. You don't mind if I smoke?"
"Certainly not. How is Mrs. Langdon?"
He drew out a cigarette-case of tortoise-shell and gold, helped himself to a cigarette, and lighted it before he answered.
"Mrs. Langdon is as usual," he replied. "She is as ill and as pious as ever."
"For which is she to be pitied the more?"
"Oh, I don't know that she is to be pitied for either," Langdon responded, in his crisp, well-bred voice. "Both her illness and her piety are in the nature of occupations to her. One must do something, you know."
Mrs. Neligage offered no reply to this, and for half a moment the caller smoked in silence.
"Tell me about yourself," he said. "You cruelly refuse to write to me, so that when you are away I am always in the dark as to what you are doing. I've no doubt you had all Washington at your feet."
"Oh, there were a few unimportant exceptions," Mrs. Neligage returned, her voice a little hard. "I don't think that if you went on now you'd find the capital draped in mourning over my departure."
Langdon knocked the ashes from his cigarette with the deliberation which marked all his movements. Then he looked at his hostess curiously.