“Thanks! And I can count upon always finding you here?”
Now RoBards amazed himself when he answered:
“I fear not. We came up only to escape the cholera. When that is over, we shall return to New York. I have my law practice to remember.”
He could feel, like hot irons in his cheek, the sharp eyes of Patty. He knew what she was thinking. He had said that he wanted to dwell here forever. And now he was pretending that he was only a brief visitor.
Instead of gasping with the shock of her husband’s perversion, she snickered a little. It was as if he heard a sleighbell tinkle in the distance. But someone else was in that sleigh with his sweetheart.
He could not understand Patty. He seemed to please her most by his most unworthy actions. He wondered if she had scented the jealousy that had prompted his words, and had taken it once more as an unwitting tribute to her.
He thought he detected a triumphant smile on Chalender’s face, and he longed to erase it with the flat of his hand. Instead, he found himself standing up to bow in answer to Chalender’s bow, like a jointed zany.
The inscrutable Patty, when Chalender had driven out of sight of the little lace handkerchief she waved at him, turned to her husband with sudden anger in her face. He braced himself for a rebuke, but again she confused him by saying:
“The impudence of Harry Chalender! Daring to crowd in on our honeymoon! It was splendid how you made him understand that we RoBardses don’t welcome him here.”
“Did I? Don’t we?” stammered RoBards, so pitifully rejoiced to find her loyal to him and to their sacred union that he gathered her in his arms, and almost sobbed, “Oh, my dear! my sweet! my darling!”