“You do me too much honor,” he replied, looking not at her but at his cigar as he flipped off the ash. “It requires a very superficial observation to discern that she is as open and undesigning as the day.”
“For my own part I think the day is particularly enigmatic,” she retorted with her scathing little laugh, that yet was so sweetly keyed. “I think it has something in reserve, especially obnoxious for us.”
“So it seems that you, too, are a profound observer, and that meteorological phenomena are your province,” her husband ponderously adopted her method of persiflage. Then he added pointedly, “I beg you to observe it was not I that initiated the personal tone of this talk.”
He rose with his pervasive suggestion of a lordly ill-humor, which enabled one to realize how grievous it was to be alone with him and privileged to note the workings of his disaffected and censorious moods. He strolled casually off, and began to talk at some little distance to one of the several passengers about the price of cotton and the disposition of the planters to hold it back from the market for a rise.
Mrs. Floyd-Rosney and Mr. Ducie were left seated near each other amidst a cluster of vacant chairs. With that peculiar clarity of the twilight air when there is no mist every detail of this limited world was visible with special distinctness, as if there were no insufficiency of light, but one looked through amber glasses;—the slate-tinted lowering sky, the ceaseless silent flow of the vast murky river, the high bank so far above the water at this low stage that the grassy levee, an elevation of prominent emphasis in so level a country, was far withdrawn and invisible from this point of view. There was on the bank a swamper’s hut perched on tall grotesque supports to escape inundation in the rise of the river, which gave some idea of the height of the flood-level in times of high water. The red glow from the open door of the cabin pulsed like the fluctuating fires of an opal, and thus intimated that a mist was insidiously beginning to rise. There was no other token of life in the riparian borders,—no token on the broad spread of the river, save that a tiny craft, a dugout, was slowly making its way across the tortured currents,—seemingly an insignificant object, for who could imagine it was freighted with grim Fate? The moment was of peculiarly lonely intimations and she spoke abruptly.
“By your leave I shall make the conversation even more personal.” Then, with an intent gaze, “Where is your brother?—and what is he doing?”
Adrian Ducie flushed deeply, looking both affronted and indignant. Then he replied in his wonted vein: “You do not know but that I am my brother,—you could not distinguish one of us from the other to save your life.”
“Oh, yes, the difference is obvious to me,” she exclaimed in agitated tones. “Besides, Randal would have spoken,—he would have greeted me. When you evidently did not recognize me I was sure that you were the one I had never seen.”
“Doubtless, Randal would have rejoiced to offer you the compliments of the season.” He could not altogether maintain his self-control and his voice had a tense note of satire.
She cast upon him a quick upbraiding glance. Then, as if with an afterthought: “I am aware that you must resent my course toward Randal.”