“Thanks to you, my wife is quite herself again, Mr. Ridgway,” Harley announced from the davenport. “Thanks also to God, who so mercifully shelters us beneath the shadow of His wing.”
But her caller preferred to force from Aline’s own lips this affidavit of health. Even his audacity could not ignore his host entirely, but it gave him the least consideration possible. To the question which still rested in his eyes the girl-wife answered shyly.
“Indeed, I am perfectly well. I have done nothing but sleep to-day and yesterday. Miss Yesler was very good to me. I do not know how I can repay the great kindness of so many friends,” she said with a swift descent of fluttering lashes to the soft cheeks upon which a faint color began to glow.
“Perhaps they find payment for the service in doing it for you,” he suggested.
“Yet, I shall take care not to forget it,” Harley said pointedly.
“Indeed!” Ridgway put it with polite insolence, the hostility in his face scarcely veiled.
“It has pleased Providence to multiply my portion so abundantly that I can reward those well who serve me.”
“At how much do you estimate Mrs. Harley’s life?” his rival asked with quiet impudence.
In the course of the past two days Aline had made the discovery that her husband and her rescuer were at swords drawn in a business way. This had greatly distressed her, and in her innocence she had resolved to bring them together. How could her inexperience know that she might as well have tried to induce the lion and the lamb to lie down together peaceably? Now she tried timidly to drift the conversation from the awkwardness into which Harley’s suggestion of a reward and his opponent’s curt retort had blundered it.
“I hope you did not find upon your return that your business was disarranged so much as you feared it might be by your absence.”