"Why didn't you come into the parlour?" she said, examining him curiously.
"I didn't admire to to-night," returned Gabriel, with grave simplicity, "and I reckoned you'd get on as well without me."
There was not the slightest trace of bitterness nor aggrieved sensitiveness in his tone or manner, and although Mrs. Conroy eyed him sharply for any latent spark of jealousy, she was forced to admit to herself that it did not exist in the quiet, serious man before her. Vaguely aware of some annoyance in his wife's face, Gabriel reached out his arm, and, lightly taking her around her waist, drew her to his knee. But the very act was so evidently a recognition of a certain kind of physical and moral weakness in the creature before him—so professional—so, as Mrs. Conroy put it to herself,—"like as if I were a sick man," that her irritation was not soothed. She rose quickly and seated herself on the other side of the fireplace. With the same implied toleration Gabriel had already displayed, he now made no attempt to restrain her.
Mrs. Conroy did not pout as another woman might have done. She only smiled a haggard smile that deepened the line of her nostril into her cheek, and pinched her thin, straight nose. Then she said, looking at the fire—
"Ain't you well?"
"I reckon not—not overly well."
There was a silence, both looking at the fire.
"You don't get anything out of that hill-side?" asked Mrs. Conroy at last, pettishly.
"No," said Gabriel.
"You have prospected all over the ridge?" continued the woman, impatiently.