"Say on!"
Emerson was cool, but not sane. It was madness to press his excited young wife now. Had he lost sense and discrimination? Could he not see, in her strong, womanly indignation, the signs of innocence? Fool! fool! to thrust sharply at her now!
"My father!" came in a sudden gush of strong feeling from the lips of Irene, as the thought of him whose name was thus ejaculated came into her mind. She struck her hands together, and stood like one in wild bewilderment. "My father!" she added, almost mournfully; "oh, that I had never left you!"
"It would have been better for you and better for me." No, he was not sane, else would no such words have fallen from his lips.
Irene, with a slight start and a slight change in the expression of her countenance, looked up at her husband:
"You think so?" Emerson was a little surprised at the way in which Irene put this interrogation. He looked for a different reply.
"I have said it," was his cold answer.
"Well." She said no more, but looked down and sat thinking for the space of more than a minute.
"I will go back to Ivy Cliff." She looked up, with something strange in the expression of her face. It was a blank, unfeeling, almost unmeaning expression.
"Well." It was Emerson's only response.