“Did she? Then she could tell ’em. Some folks can.” He winked at me—one of those disgraceful winks of which he was so fond. “I tell you that this carriage is mine—mine! Or rather, it’s my wife’s. I presented it to her—with my love. If you want to have any peace at all you’re obliged to give your wife things—at intervals. What you’ve got to do is to make the intervals as long as you can. Between ourselves, my wife is waiting for it now—on the pavement. She’ll be getting anxious. She soon gets anxious, does Maria. When she finds out what has become of it—if she ever does find out—the mercury’ll run up the thermometer at a rate that’ll burst the whole machine. I know. I’ve had it happen before, and found it most expensive. That’s when the intervals recur.” The dreadful being winked again. “But this time I shan’t mind. When I noticed, in the theatre there, the friendly way in which you received those little movements of my eyelids I had my hopes, but they never went as far as this. You little pet!”
Out came the hand, and back it went—quicker than it came.
“Will you keep yourself to yourself, sir? Did you dare for one moment to suggest that I encouraged you in your insolent behaviour?”
“Never know what a woman calls encouragement. But when you find her waiting for you in your own wife’s brougham, it does—well, it does look as if something was meant, doesn’t it?”
“Do you venture to insinuate that I got into your wife’s carriage knowing it was here, and that you were coming into it?”
“Now, my dear, don’t let’s ask each other questions. I’m used to being put through my catechism; it happens every day of my life. Do let’s be sociable.”
“Be so good as to stop the carriage—your wife’s carriage—this instant. If you won’t get out of it, I will.”
“Not if I know it. Now you’re unreasonable. Whatever happens now, I shall get it hot. I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.”
“It’s a matter of complete indifference to me for what you’re hung, so long as you are hung. If you won’t stop the carriage, then I shall.”
“No, you don’t.”