“Nothing,” he said. “It had just this instant occurred to me to go back and try again. I was in a beastly fume about you.”
“And seem to be still,” she said, in a way to put him in mind of the high tone he had been using.
“For reasons to which you are pleased to be oblivious,” he retorted. “It is to be imagined that I have some interest in seeing you safely home. May I take you on from here?”
“Another one,” Agnes murmured in a tone of soliloquy. “How repetitious!”
The thought touched off her feelings. They exploded in a burst of shrill, irrelevant laughter. John was scandalized. His rage was boundless. Yet at the same time his sense of responsibility increased. Abominable thoughts assailed him. He wondered if perhaps her father had not been right to keep her under restraint. He fervently wished he had never tempted her to break out. A resolve to get her home by force if necessary was forming in his mind when Thane put in.
“They ain’t no home,” he said. “That’s the trouble.”
“What do you know about it?” John asked, blazing.
“Oughten I know somewhat about it seeing as she’s my own wife?” said Thane, with dismal veracity.
John, for an instant appalled, turned fiercely on Agnes. “Now what have you done?” he asked. She was so startled by his manner that she couldn’t speak. “What have you done?” he demanded, now shaking her and with such authority that for a moment her spirit quailed. “Is it true? Are you married?”
“Yes,” she said.