Glennard gave a short laugh. The defence was feebler than he had expected: she was certainly not a clever woman.
“Your deference to my wishes is really beautiful; but it’s not the first time in history that a man has made a mistake in introducing his friends to his wife. You must, at any rate, have seen since then that my enthusiasm had cooled; but so, perhaps, has your eagerness to oblige me.”
She met this with a silence that seemed to rob the taunt of half its efficacy.
“Is that what you imply?” he pressed her.
“No,” she answered with sudden directness. “I noticed some time ago that you seemed to dislike him, but since then—”
“Well—since then?”
“I’ve imagined that you had reasons for still wishing me to be civil to him, as you call it.”
“Ah,” said Glennard, with an effort at lightness; but his irony dropped, for something in her voice made him feel that he and she stood at last in that naked desert of apprehension where meaning skulks vainly behind speech.
“And why did you imagine this?” The blood mounted to his forehead. “Because he told you that I was under obligations to him?”
She turned pale. “Under obligations?”