“Well, I’m glad! He ought to have been hung; if it hadn’t been for him Avery would be alive to-day; but my poor brother sacrificed himself to save that miserable wretch from being sent to State prison.”
“Sacrificed himself by swearing to a lie,” was her husband’s inward comment, but aloud he merely remarked that he pitied O’Rourke’s parents.
“Yes, of course you do,” snapped his wife; “you are always ready to feel for anybody but those nearest to you. You have no sympathy to waste upon May and me, but those low, vulgar Irish people are objects of the deepest commiseration.”
“I have done my best to show sympathy with you and your niece, Dora,” he returned; “but you are never just to your unfortunate husband.”
“Unfortunate because he has me for a wife, I presume you mean,” she retorted, flashing an angry glance at him. “Breakfast has been waiting for you till it must be completely spoiled. Come and eat, if you can find an appetite after such heartless treatment of your wife.”
She led the way to the table, he following in silence, having learned by past experience the utter uselessness of trying to have the last word in a controversy with her.
“You don’t eat as if you relished your food the least bit,” she remarked, after watching him furtively for a few minutes; “but if you don’t find it palatable it’s your own fault for keeping it waiting so long.”
“I have no complaint to make,” he answered, “but I am too sick at heart over the awful doings we’ve had in this town of late to feel much appetite for the daintiest of food.” With that he rose and left the table and the house.
Coming in some hours later, he found his wife in what had been the private office of her brother, looking over his papers.
“I’m not exactly sure that you have a right to be at those, Dora,” he remarked, in a tone of mild expostulation.