"Can you read a woman's thoughts?" she asked in her lightest manner.
"I can judge by signs. What was your thought, Adelaide?"
"A foolish thought. To keep guard and watch over me, you said. The things are so different. The first is a proof of love, the second of suspicion."
"A logician, too," he said with a pleased smile; "the air here agrees with you." So saying he left her, and the moment he was beyond the reach of her personal influence his native manner asserted itself, and his features assumed their usual grave expression. As he was descending the stairs of the hotel he was accosted by a woman, the maid he had advised his wife to keep.
"I beg your pardon, sir," she said; "but may I ask why I am discharged?"
"Certainly not of me," he replied stiffly; "you are my wife's servant. She has her reasons."
"She has not made me acquainted with them," said the woman discontentedly. "Will you?"
He saw that she was in an ill-temper, and although he was not a man to tolerate insolence, he was attentive to trifles.
"I do not interfere with my wife's domestics. She engages whom she pleases, and discharges whom she pleases."
"But to do right, sir, that is everyone's affair. I am discharged suddenly, without notice, and without having committed a fault. Until this morning I am perfection; no one can dress my lady like me, no one can arrange her hair so admirably. That is what she says to me continually. Why, then, am I discharged? I ask my lady why, and she says, for her convenience."