'Leave her alone. I'm sick of all this nonsense about religion. I should like to know what harm we're doing,' said Ralph.
Kate made a movement to rise, but he laid his hand upon her arm, and a moment after Mrs. Ede was gone.
'Oh, do let me go and fetch her,' exclaimed Kate. 'I shouldn't—I know I shouldn't read these books. It pains her so much to see me wasting my time. She must be right.'
'There's no right about it; she'd bully us all if she had her way. Do be quiet, Kate! Do as I tell you, and let's hear the story.'
Relinquishing another half-hearted expostulation which rose to her lips, Kate commenced to read. Ralph was enchanted, and, deliciously tickled at the idea that he was like someone in print, he chuckled under his breath. Soon they came to the part that had struck Kate as being so particularly appropriate to her husband. It concerned a scene between this ascetic courtier and a handsome, middle-aged widow who frequently gave him to understand that her feelings regarding him were of the tenderest kind; but on every occasion he pretended to misunderstand her. The humour of the whole thing consisted in the innocence of the lady, who fancied she had not explained herself sufficiently; and harassed with this idea, she pursued the courtier from the Court hall into the illuminated gardens, and there told him, and in language that admitted of no doubt, that she wished to marry him. The courtier was indignant, and answered her so tartly that Kate, even in reading it over a second time, could not refrain from fits of laughter.
'It is—is so—s-o like what you w-wo-uld say if a wo-wo-man were to fol-low you,' she said, with the tears rolling down her cheeks.
'Is it really?' asked Ralph, joining in the laugh, although in a way that did not seem to be very genuine. The fact was that he felt just a little piqued at being thought so indifferent to the charms of the other sex, and looked at his wife for a moment or two in a curious sort of way, trying to think how he should express himself. At last he said:
'I'm sure that if it was my own Kate who was there I shouldn't answer so crossly.'
Kate ceased laughing, and looked up at him so suddenly that she increased his embarrassment; but the remembrance that he was after all only speaking to his wife soon came to his aid, and confidentially he sat down beside her on the sofa. Her first impulse was to draw away from him—it was so long since he had spoken to her thus.
'Could you never love me again if I were very kind to you?'