"Do you remember how, this morning, when you told me of this event, I asked you if there were anything particular you wished me to do? You spoke of my being at home, but that was a matter of course. You spoke of something else," he went on, while she sat with her book on her knee and her raised eyes; "something that makes me almost wish it may happen. You spoke," he said, "of the possibility of my seeing her alone. Do you know, if that comes," he asked, "the use I shall make of it?" And then as she waited: "The use is all before me."
"Ah, it's your own business now!" said his wife. But it had made her rise.
"I shall make it my own," he answered. "I shall tell her I lied to her."
"Ah no!" she returned.
"And I shall tell her you did."
She shook her head again. "Oh, still less!"
With which therefore they stood at difference, he with his head erect and his happy idea perched, in its eagerness, on his crest. "And how then is she to know?"
"She isn't to know."
"She's only still to think you don't—?"
"And therefore that I'm always a fool? She may think," said
Maggie, "what she likes."