‘And yet, are you sure that you might not feel (for her sake, I say for her sake) any slight coldness towards her on the part of—Society?’
‘O! You and I may well stumble at the word,’ returned Eugene, laughing. ‘Do we mean our Tippins?’
‘Perhaps we do,’ said Mortimer, laughing also.
‘Faith, we do!’ returned Eugene, with great animation. ‘We may hide behind the bush and beat about it, but we do! Now, my wife is something nearer to my heart, Mortimer, than Tippins is, and I owe her a little more than I owe to Tippins, and I am rather prouder of her than I ever was of Tippins. Therefore, I will fight it out to the last gasp, with her and for her, here, in the open field. When I hide her, or strike for her, faint-heartedly, in a hole or a corner, do you whom I love next best upon earth, tell me what I shall most righteously deserve to be told:—that she would have done well to turn me over with her foot that night when I lay bleeding to death, and spat in my dastard face.’
The glow that shone upon him as he spoke the words, so irradiated his features that he looked, for the time, as though he had never been mutilated. His friend responded as Eugene would have had him respond, and they discoursed of the future until Lizzie came back. After resuming her place at his side, and tenderly touching his hands and his head, she said:
‘Eugene, dear, you made me go out, but I ought to have stayed with you. You are more flushed than you have been for many days. What have you been doing?’
‘Nothing,’ replied Eugene, ‘but looking forward to your coming back.’
‘And talking to Mr Lightwood,’ said Lizzie, turning to him with a smile. ‘But it cannot have been Society that disturbed you.’
‘Faith, my dear love!’ retorted Eugene, in his old airy manner, as he laughed and kissed her, ‘I rather think it was Society though!’
The word ran so much in Mortimer Lightwood’s thoughts as he went home to the Temple that night, that he resolved to take a look at Society, which he had not seen for a considerable period.