"She is in love with him in spite of what she says," remarked the Young Doctor to himself. "Well," he continued aloud, "the fact is, Crozier's almost well in a way, but his mind is in a state, and he is not going to get wholly right as things are. Since things came out in court, since he told us his whole story, he has been different. It's as though—"
She interrupted him hastily and with suppressed emotion. "Yes, yes, do you think I've not noticed that? He's been asleep in a way for five years, and now he's awake again. He is not James Gathorne Kerry now; he is James Shiel Gathorne Crozier, and—oh, you understand: he's back again where he was before—before he left her."
The Young Doctor nodded approvingly. "What a little brazen wonder you are! I declare you see more than—"
"Yet you won't have me?" she asked mockingly. "You're too clever for me," he rejoined with spirit. "I'm too conceited. I must marry a girl that'd kneel to me and think me as wise as Socrates. But he's back again, as you say, and, in my view, his wife ought to be back again also."
"She ought to be here," was Kitty's swift reply, "though I think mighty little of her—mighty little, I can tell you. Stuckup, great tall stork of a woman, that lords it over a man as though she was a goddess. Wears diamonds in the middle of the day, I suppose, and cold-blooded as—as a fish."
"She ought to have married me, according to your opinion of me. You said
I was a fish," remarked the Young Doctor, with a laugh.
"The whale and the catfish!"
"Heavens, what spite!" he rejoined. "Catfish—what do you know about Mrs. Crozier? You may be brutally unjust—waspishly unjust, I should say."
"Do I look like a wasp?" she asked half tearfully. She was in a strange mood.
"You look like a golden busy bee," he answered. But tell me, how did you come to know enough about her to call her a cat?"