I was astonished by the rationality of this answer and the air of intelligence that accompanied its delivery.
‘No, I fear not,’ said I, much embarrassed. ‘As she only came on board yesterday——’
‘Well?’ he exclaimed, finding that I paused.
‘Oh,’ said I with a bit of a stammer, ‘it just occurred to me you might have forgotten that she was now one of us, journeying home.’
‘Tut, tut!’ said he, waving his hand at me, but without turning his head. ‘Laura, you are looking after her, my dear?’
‘My maid sees that she has all she requires,’ answered the girl. ‘She declines to have anything to say to me—to meet me—to hear of me.’
He nodded his head slowly and gravely at her, and lowering his voice said, ‘Can she hear us, do you think?’
‘No,’ I exclaimed, ‘not through the two bulkheads, with the width of passage between.’
He smoked leisurely whilst he kept his eyes thoughtfully bent on Miss Laura. ‘My cousin,’ said he, addressing her as though I were absent, ‘has on more than one occasion said to me, “Suppose you recover your wife, what are you going to do with her?” I have recovered her and now I will tell you my intentions. Laura, you know I adored her.’ She inclined her head. ‘What term would you apply to a woman,’ he proceeded, ‘who should abandon a devoted husband that worshipped the ground she walked upon? who should desert the sweetest little infant’—I thought his voice would falter here, but it was as steady as the fixed regard of his eyes—‘that ever came from heaven to fill a mother’s heart with love? who should forfeit a position of distinction and opulence,—who should stealthily creep like a thief in the night from a home of beauty, of elegance, and of splendour; who should do all this for an end of such depravity that it must be nameless?’ his forefinger shot up with a jerk and his eyes glowed under the trembling of the lids. ‘What is the term you would apply to such a woman?’ he continued, now scowling and with an imperious note in his voice.
I guessed the word that was in his mind and cried, ‘Why, mad of course.’