Before the evening is over Edgar has made a very important discovery,--to wit, that however cordially one may rejoice when two human souls after long and aimless wanderings come together and are united, any prolonged association with a couple so reconciled is considerably more tedious than with an unreconciled pair; wherefore he leaves Erlach Court on the following day.
CHAPTER XXXII.
[THÉRÈSE, THE WISE.]
In Thérèse's boudoir are assembled four people, Thérèse, her husband, her brother Zino, and Edgar,--Edgar, who on the previous day, to the great surprise of his relatives in Paris, was persuaded to transfer himself from the Hôtel Bouillemont, whither he had gone upon his arrival, to the Avenue Villiers and the shelter of his brother's hospitable roof.
Thérèse, exhausted, more breathless than usual, is lying on a lounge, wrapped in a thick white coverlet, shivering, coughing, feverish, with every symptom of a violent cold, and disputing vehemently with her husband as to whether, as he maintains, she caught the said cold on Monday at the Bon-Marché, or, as she maintains, on Tuesday in his smoking-room.
"No one could take cold in my smoking-room; it is the only room in the house where the temperature is a healthy one," Edmund declares. "Judge for yourself, Edgar; there's no getting a sensible word out of Zino. How could any one catch cold in my smoking-room? I know perfectly well how she caught it. Day before yesterday--Monday--there were bargains in Oriental rugs advertised at the Bon-Marché. My wife rushes there in such a storm----"
"That means, I drove there in an hermetically-closed coupé," Thérèse defends herself.
"Pshaw! the damp air always penetrates into every carriage," her husband cuts her words short. "The fact is, she rushed to the Rue du Bac, where she did not buy a single rug, but instead a dozen umbrellas, and then came home in a state of exhaustion,--such exhaustion that I had positively to carry her up-stairs, because she was unable to stir; and now she blames my smoking-room for her cold! It is absurd!" And, by way of further expression of his anger, for which words do not suffice, Edmund rattles the tongs about among the embers on the hearth.
"Have some regard for my nerves, Edmund," Thérèse entreats, stopping her ears with her fingers. "You make more noise than one of Wagner's operas. Twelve umbrellas!" Then turning to Edgar, "To place the slightest dependence upon what my husband says----"
But before she can finish her sentence Edmund breaks in again: