"But this is the most unparalleled country!" she exclaimed. "Mr. Rivers, do you seriously intend me to believe that no lady may enter that house? Why, I ask you, how is it possible to conduct a domestic establishment under such circumstances?"
"Ah! that's the worst of it," Laurence said. He was beginning to be amused again. "I tell you, the condition of that house suggests the most awful reflections."
"I am glad to hear it."
"Yes, awful," he repeated. "For it is the best mounted, the best served, the best kept house I have ever stayed in. It is as clean as a new pin. The whole thing moves on wheels—and yet never the trace of a petticoat! It follows that one is assailed by the unholy suspicion that woman may be, after all, a quite superfluous luxury; and that the work of the world, even in its humble, domestic aspects, can get along just as well without her. My uncle entertains this opinion anyhow, and gives the most convincing practical exposition of it. He has supplied me with a large amount of information under this head; and, upon my word, I'm afraid I am beginning to see the force of his arguments. After that, I'd better go, hadn't I?"
"Well, I really believe perhaps you had," she answered. For once she looked perplexed, almost flurried. Her face was still decidedly pink. But she rallied herself, and fired a parting shot.—"Unless," she added, "to make amends for having told me so very plainly that my presence would not be tolerated at Stoke Rivers, you relent and give me the whole story of that family spectre."
Laurence raised his head sharply, and once more his sense of amusement evaporated. The return to this theme jarred on him. The lady's persistence appeared to him in singularly bad taste. The reiteration of that word angered him moreover. In hearing it he was sensible of a turn in his blood, as though an insult were being offered to one very dear to him.
"Spectre?" he said slowly. "Pardon me—I—I don't quite follow you. What spectre?"
His hostess was roused in her turn.
"Why, Mr. Rivers, what has happened to you?" she inquired. "What have I said to disturb your equanimity? I had not supposed you to be so sensitive."
Whereupon the folly of his anger became extremely apparent to Laurence; the more so that he had so recently concluded to eschew ambitious adventures and decline upon the large and unexciting levels of the Commonplace. In those regions hasty resentments, hot blood, the fine-gentleman-duelling-spirit, in short, is clearly out of the picture. And then, why quarrel with Mrs. Bellingham of all people? She was a very charming, little person, specially when—as just now—her glance dwelt fondly upon her red-coated babies and their escort of nurses, donkey, and dogs. If she had trodden on his toes, it was unwittingly, and without any intention of malice. So he proceeded to make amende honorable with proper despatch.