Here Lawrence tried to laugh. He felt awkward and foolish.
Prudence rose. She knelt down in front of her husband and crossed her arms over her bosom.
"My lord," she said, in a low voice, "your will is my law. So be it, even as you have said. I will smile no more on that Meramble man person. And if your slave does not obey, cut off her head; then she will smile no more on any one."
Lawrence leaned forward and caught his wife back in his arms.
His spirits suddenly rose wildly, and they kept at this high tide for several days. Prudence was as she had been immediately before and after their marriage, passionately in love with him, gay, saucy, tender, caressing.
Therefore he was somewhat surprised that, when he came home from Jacksonville one morning, he should meet an acquaintance who should say:
"You've missed the excursion down to Matanzas, Lawrence."
"Yes, but I meant to miss it," was the reponse.
Afterward Lawrence remembered that the man looked at him with some curiosity as he remarked, carelessly:
"Mrs. Lawrence likes such junketings better than we do. She's gone in Meramble's launch."