The tears came into her eyes. She turned her head away. "Do you really care whether I am ill or well?" she asked.
"Do I really care? What a question! Of course I care. Are you suffering?"
"N—no; not now. I believe I should not feel any suffering if you only loved me, Ancram."
"Castalia! How can you be so absurd?"
He rose from his seat beside her, and walked impatiently up and down the room. Nothing irritated him so much as to be called on for sentiment or tenderness.
"There!" she exclaimed, with a little despondent gesture of the head, "you were speaking and looking kindly, and I have driven you away! I wish I was dead."
Algernon stopped in his walk, and cast a singular look at his wife. Then after a moment he said, in his usual light manner, "My dear Cassy, you are low and nervous. It really is not good for you to mope by yourself as you do. Come, rouse yourself to write this letter to my lord, then after dinner you can have the fly to drive to my mother's. She complains that she sees you very seldom."
"Will you come too, Ancram?"
"I——well, yes; if it is possible, I will come too."
"I think," said Castalia, putting her hands on his shoulders, and gazing wistfully into his face, "that if you and I could go away to some quiet strange place—far away from all these odious people—across the seas somewhere—I think we might be happy even now."