Had Althea answered equally carelessly, "Oh! very well," she would have aroused suspicion, for she well understood her husband. So she said with enthusiasm: "I liked him very much indeed. I wish you could have met him. He is very agreeable and most intelligent."
"You speak as if you thought I was a stranger to him. I have seen Hubert Lisle before to-day!"
"But you have not seen him of late. A six years residence abroad must have changed him greatly."
"Umph! Your cousin is not the first person who has crossed the Atlantic, as you would have me infer. At all events, he is a sneak and a coward to stay in my house more than two weeks, and decamp just before I was expected." Althea was silent.
"A sneak and a coward, I repeat; what have you to say to that?" demanded Thornton, his eyes blazing like coals of fire.
"Nothing," said the wife, indifferently.
"Nothing! By Mars! do you answer nothing, when I ask you a civil question? It is well he did not let me find him here; it is not the first insult he would have got from me, and perhaps something worse. If there's a person on earth I hate worse than Sharp, it is that self-conceited Hubert Lisle. He is a puppy, an upstart, vain as a woman, and deep and false as perdition itself."
He waited as if expecting a reply. None came; he glanced sideways to his wife, and continued:
"Yes, you two would make a very pretty couple, very suitable. Your two heads are forever among the stars. I wonder there is a book of poetry left in the house. It is a marvel you both did not sail away in some carved shell of hollow pearl, almost translucent with the light divine des tous deux within. For ottomans you could have piles of Scott, Moore, Byron, Shelley, and Keats; and for food and drink, you could have stringed instruments, and easel, palette, and brush. How contemptible are womanish tastes in a man!" Again he waited vainly for a reply. The pallid fingers of Althea were pulling in pieces a half-faded flower, upon which her lustrous eyes were unvaryingly fastened.
"Good heavens, Althea, how provoking you are!" cried Thornton, rising from his seat and confronting furiously his wife, "cannot you speak to a man; what have you to say, what are you thinking of?"