“Is it?” said Annie, carelessly, as she refilled his glass.
“Yes; and I suppose you know that as well as I do. You have the ars celare artem, like the accomplished actress you are off as well as on the stage; but I know you inveigled me here to-day with the base intention that your wit and your wine should get into my head, and make me forget for a little while my cares and my difficulties.”
“And, if wit and wine never fulfilled a worse mission than that, they would not be so ill spoken of,” said Annie, gently.
“Well said! Why did you leave us, Annie? You were the good genius of the Grange, and I am almost ready to think that, if you had never left it, we should all be there still.”
“That’s right. Put all the blame upon a defenseless woman.”
“I am glad you were not there at the end; it was a miserable time.”
He was so deeply serious that Annie grew serious too.
“Do you think I would have gone if I had known what was coming? Oh, George, you cannot think so ill of me!”
“It is better for you that you did go then; you could not have prevented the crash. I had known it must come from the time my father died. It has been nothing but wave after wave of difficulty, and getting through or over them somehow ever since. I suppose it would have been better to give up long ago; but we were so hedged in on every side that the ruin was bound to be complete when it did come, and you are just the sort of woman to understand the feeling which forces one, with or against one’s will, to fight it out to the end, and stave off the fall into a broken-down swell as long as possible.”
“George, George, how can you use such an absurd term? You, with your pluck, your patience!”