"Your wife would never tell a tale of any one, particularly of you," she asserted. "But what would you ask of me?"
"Only a plea for human happiness," I said with mock gravity. "I have seen absolute despair written indelibly on a certain human countenance to-day, and the sight has troubled me ever since. Are you aware that there is a poor young man in this hotel, whose face opens like a daisy to the sun when you smile upon him, and closes in the darkness of your neglect?"
"Why am I absurd?"
"Because you talk in this fashion."
"Will you smile upon him again? He has suffered a great deal these last two days."
"Really you are too ridiculous. I don't know what you mean."
"That is not the truth, Miss Trevor, and you know it."
"But what have I done wrong?"
"That business with the rose just now, for instance, was cruel, to say the least of it."