He is looking at me with that same greedy anxiety in his eyes, which I remember in our last fatal conversation about Musgrave.
"He went away," reply I, unable any longer to keep watch and ward over my countenance and voice, rising and walking hastily to the window.
The moment I have done it, I repent. However red I was, however confused I looked, it would have been better to have remained and faced him. For several minutes there is silence. I look out at the stiff comeliness of the variously tinted asters, at the hoary-colored dew that is like a film along the morning grass. I do not know what he looks at, because I have my back to him, but I think he is looking at Barbara's note again. At least, I judge this by what he says next—"Poor little soul!" (in an accent of the honestest, tenderest pity), "how happy she seems!"
"Ah!" say I, with a bitter little laugh, "she will mend of that, will not she?"
He does not echo my mirth; indeed, I think I hear him sigh.
"'Romances paint at full length people's wooings,
But only give a bust of marriages!'"
say I, in soft quotation, addressing rather myself and my thoughts than my companion.
He has joined me; he, too, is looking out at the serene aster-flowers, at the glittering glory of the dew.
"Since when you have learned to quote 'Don Juan?'" he asks, with a sort of surprise.
"Since when?" I reply, with the same tart playfulness—"oh! since I married! I date all my accomplishments from then!—it is my anno Domini."