"Why not?"
"Oh, come, come, my darling! Just consider. With a bedroom empty and waiting, upstairs, is my old Vimpany to be sent to quarters for the night among strangers? I wouldn't speak harshly to you, Iris, for the whole world; and I don't deny that the convivial doctor may be sometimes a little too fond of his drop of grog. You will tell me, maybe, that he hasn't got on nicely with his wife; and I grant it. There are not many people who set such a pretty example of matrimony as we do. Poor humanity—there's all that's to be said about it. But when you tell me that Vimpany is a bad man, and the worst friend I could possibly have, and so forth—what better can I do than set it down to your imagination? I've a pretty fancy, myself; and I think I see my angel inventing poetical characters, up among congenial clouds. What's the matter? Surely, you haven't done breakfast yet?"
"Yes."
"Are you going to leave me?"
"I am going to my room."
"You're in a mighty hurry to get away. I never meant to vex you, Iris. Ah, well, if you must leave the table, I'll have the honour of opening the door for you, at any rate. I wonder what you're going to do?"
"To cultivate my imagination," she answered, with the first outbreak of bitterness that had escaped her yet.
His face hardened. "There seems to be something like bearing malice in this," he said. "Are you treating me, for the first time, to an exhibition of enmity? What am I to call it, if it's not that?"
"Call it disappointment," she suggested quietly, and left him.
Lord Harry went back to his breakfast. His jealousy was up in arms again. "She's comparing me with her absent friend," he said to himself, "and wishing she had married the amiable Mountjoy instead of me."