“I should think you had taken leave of your conscience!” cried her mother.
“I hope I have, mother. I am going to consult my reason after this.”
“Your reason!”
“Well, then, my inclination. I have had enough of conscience,—of my own, and of yours, too. That is what I told him, and that is what I mean. There is such a thing as having too much conscience, and of getting stupefied by it, so that you can’t really see what’s right. But I don’t care. I believe I should like to do wrong for a while, and I will do wrong if it’s doing right to marry him.”
She had her hand on the door-knob, and now she opened the door, and closed it after her with something very like a bang.
She naturally could not keep within doors in this explosive state, and she went downstairs, and out upon the piazza. Mr. Maynard was there, smoking, with his boots on top of the veranda-rail, and his person thrown back in his chair at the angle requisite to accomplish this elevation of the feet. He took them down, as he saw her approach, and rose, with the respect in which he never failed for women, and threw his cigar away.
“Mr. Maynard,” she asked abruptly, “do you know where Mr. Libby is?”
“No, I don’t, doctor, I’m sorry to say. If I did, I would send and borrow some more cigars of him. I think that the brand our landlord keeps must have been invented by Mr. Track, the great anti-tobacco reformer.”
“Is he coming back? Isn’t he coming back?” she demanded breathlessly.
“Why, yes, I reckon he must be coming back. Libby generally sees his friends through. And he’ll have some curiosity to know how Mrs. Maynard and I have come out of it all.” He looked at her with something latent in his eye; but what his eye expressed was merely a sympathetic regret that he could not be more satisfactory.