‘Now, I don’t call that fair, but the very reverse,’ said Michael, emphatically. ‘She would have just as much right to go to Miss Wynter and say, “Never mind! When we are wed, the Red Gables alliance must come to an end.”’
‘Oh no! There’s a great difference.’
‘Yes, there is. There is the difference that you could make her give up Miss Wynter, and that she could not make you give up me.’
‘No one makes me give up my friend,’ said Roger, deliberately; ‘neither wife nor mistress, nor any one else. It is no true wife’s part to wish to separate her husband and his friends.’
‘A wife has the strictest right to say the same thing with regard to her husband. And you have not a shadow of right, Roger, to say she shall not know Miss Wynter when she is married to you. If you make it a sine quâ non, you ought to tell her so in advance.’
‘You are very hot about it. I’d as soon she had a serpent for a friend as——’ He nodded expressively.
‘Well, I say you have no right to say so,’ said Michael, ‘and I recommend you to think it over on your way down. You talk about educating her where she is deficient—poor little thing! but it isn’t education to say “you shall” and “you shall not.”’
‘You may be right,’ said Roger, deliberately. ‘Only, please, do me the justice to own that I did not say how I should stop the alliance. I only said it should come to an end. There is such a thing as persuasion.’
‘Oh, if you are going to get out of it in that way——’
‘Good night,’ said Roger, amiably. ‘Don’t leap so readily to conclusions another time.’