"As to this business with Hartmann, I really do admire the self-abnegation you have shown in it. You, of all people, must feel a strong antipathy to persons of his class."
Eugénie opened her large eyes wide, and looked at him sternly.
"I feel an antipathy to nothing but to weakness and vulgarity. I respect any one who has energy thoroughly to fill his place in the world, whether that place be a high or a lowly one."
There was a hard ring in her voice. Arthur's hand, still playing with the fan, moved rather nervously, and there was a slight quiver about his lips. He started a little when she spoke of weakness and vulgarity, though the expression of his face was as indifferent as ever.
"A most elevated view of the matter," said he carelessly. "But I am afraid you would modify it in some degree, if you were to be brought in nearer contact with the rough wild sort of life which often obtains in the lowly places."
"But this young miner is something out of the common," declared Eugénie decidedly. "He may be wild and untamed, like one of Nature's elements which grow to be a danger when not properly directed. I did not find him rough."
She had involuntarily spoken with some warmth. The latent, half-stifled fire in Arthur's eyes gleamed out again, as he fixed them on her.
"You appear to exercise a marvellous degree of authority over this 'wild untamed element of Nature.' It was on the point of breaking out in an unseemly manner before my father. You had but to raise your fan, and the angry lion became as gentle as a lamb." Here the said fan was so violently opened and closed by the young man's slender white fingers that the costly toy was in serious danger, while he went on half mocking. "And in what a knightly manner he bent over your hand! If we had not come in, I believe he would have ventured to kiss it like a real preux chevalier."
Eugénie rose hastily. "I fear, Arthur, this man may force from you and your father something more than a mere sneer, and I do not know whether Herr Berkow does wisely to drive his people into an opposition, which is constantly growing, and the consequences of which may one day recoil on his own head."
Her husband's gaze was riveted on her as she stood before him, and yet her rustling silks and airy laces, her roses and soft pearls, were nothing new to him, any more than the proud and beautiful head with its dark indignant eyes. Perhaps he was struck by her earnest championship of her protégé. He preserved the same careless, half-mocking tone in which he had spoken hitherto, but it concealed a feeling of suppressed irritation, and the fan he held in his hands met with decided ill-luck. The delicately carved ivory was broken in two as he flung, rather than threw, it on to a chair.