The helpless laughter broke through her lamentation, but she cried a little more to keep herself in countenance.
“But I guess, from a previous acquaintance with the party's character, that it's really all you, Marcia. I don't blame you. Miss Kingsbury's hospitality has left me as hollow as if I'd had nothing to eat for a week; and I know you're perishing from inanition. Hence these tears.”
It delighted her to have him make fun of Miss Kingsbury's tea, and she lifted her head to let him see that she was laughing for pleasure now, before she turned away to dry her eyes.
“Oh, poor fellow!” she cried. “I did pity you so when I saw those mean little slices of bread and butter coming round!”
“Yes,” said Bartley, “I felt sorry myself. But don't speak of them any more, dearest.”
“And I suppose,” pursued Marcia, “that all the time she was talking to you there, you were simply ravening.”
“I was casting lots in my own mind to see which of the company I should devour first.”
His drollery appeared to Marcia the finest that ever was; she laughed and laughed again; when he made fun of the conjecturable toughness of the elderly aristocrat, she implored him to stop if he did not want to kill her. Marcia was not in the state in which woman best convinces her enemies of her fitness for empire, though she was charming in her silly happiness, and Bartley felt very glad that he had not yielded to his first impulse to deal savagely with her. “Come,” he said, “let us go out somewhere, and get some oysters.”
She began at once to take out her ear-rings and loosen her hair. “No, I'll get something here in the house; I'm not very hungry. But you go, Bartley, and have a good supper, or you'll be sick to-morrow, and not fit to work. Go,” she added to his hesitating image in the glass, “I insist upon it. I won't have you stay.” His reflected face approached from behind; she turned hers a little, and their mirrored lips met over her shoulder. “Oh, how sweet you are, Bartley!” she murmured.
“Yes, you will always find me obedient when commanded to go out and repair my wasted tissue.”