“Well, if I do, it’s my own business.”
“It is my business,” she said, angrily.
“I’d like to see you help yourself,” he said, turning fiercely toward her.
She burst into tears.
“You might stay with me when I’m ill,” she said. “I don’t like to stay alone; I get so nervous that I sometimes think I’m going to die.”
Max laughed boisterously, as he said:
“Oh, I guess there’s no danger of that. If you think there is you had better go back to that other man of yours. I’d rather have a live wife on my hands any day than a dead one, as I have no particular fancy for funerals; they create too much of a sensation.”
“Mercy, how you talk. I am sure I don’t want to die, but I don’t believe Scott would let me into the house if I were to go back to him.”
“Oh, yes, he would; he is one of those Christian fellows, you know. He would let you go back and run the Wilmer mansion, just as you used to, and then if you took a notion to run off with a handsomer man, he’d let you go and not even apply for a divorce. Say, do you know you are his wife just as much as you ever was?”