"Yes, I will," she murmured, shocked into unexpected submission by the suppressed misery of his voice. "I will be in the garden," and she darted away.
The coast was now clear for any action the new arrival might choose to take. His first proceeding was to stare hard at Agapit, as if he wished that he, too, would take himself away; but this Agapit had no intention of doing, and he smoked on imperturbably, pretending not to see Charlitte's irritated glances, and keeping his own fixed on the azure depths of the sky.
"You mention changes," said Charlitte, at last, turning to his wife. "What changes?"
"You have just arrived, you have heard nothing,—and yet there would be little to hear about me, and Sleeping Water does not change much,—yet—"
Charlitte's cool glance wandered contemptuously over that part of the village nearest them. "It is dull here,—as dull as the cannibal islands. I think moss would grow on me if I stayed."
"But it would break my heart to leave it," said Rose, desperately.
"I would take good care of you," he said, jocularly. "We would go to New Orleans. You would amuse yourself well. There are young men there,—plenty of them,—far smarter than the boys on the Bay."
Rose was in an agony. With frantic eyes she devoured the cool, cynical face of her husband, then, with a low cry, she fell on her knees before him. "Charlitte, Charlitte, I must confess."
Charlitte at once became intensely interested, and forgot to watch Agapit, who, however, got up, and, savagely biting his pipe, strolled to a little distance.
"I have done wrong, my husband," sobbed Rose.