t
have changed him greatly."

"Umph! Your cousin is not the first person who has crossed the Atlantic,
as you would have me infer. At all events, he is a sneak and a coward to
stay in my house more than two weeks, and decamp just before I was
expected." Althea was silent.

"A sneak and a coward, I repeat; what have you to say to that?" demanded
Thornton, his eyes blazing like coals of fire.

"Nothing," said the wife, indifferently.

"Nothing! By Mars! do you answer _nothing_, when I ask you a civil
question? It is well he did not let me find him here; it is not the
first insult he would have got from me, and perhaps something worse. If
there's a person on earth I hate worse than Sharp, it is that
self-conceited Hubert Lisle. He is a puppy, an upstart, vain as a woman,
and deep and false as perdition itself."

He waited as if expecting a reply. None came; he glanced sideways to his
wife, and continued:

"Yes, you two would make a very pretty couple, very suitable. Your two
heads are forever among the stars. I wonder there is a book of poetry
left in the house. It is a marvel you both did not sail away in some
carved shell of hollow pearl, almost translucent with the light divine
_des tous deux_ within. For ottomans you could have piles of Scott,
Moore, Byron, Shelley, and Keats; and for food and drink, you could have
stringed instruments, and easel, palette, and brush. How contemptible
are womanish tastes in a man!" Again he waited vainly for a reply. The
pallid fingers of Althea were pulling in pieces a half-faded flower,
upon which her lustrous eyes were unvaryingly fastened.

"Good heavens, Althea, how provoking you are!" cried Thornton, rising
from his seat and confronting furiously his wife, "cannot you speak to a
man; what have you to say, what are you thinking of?"

"Thinking of?" she said absently, scattering the petals from her fair
palm to the floor, then raising her eyes full to his: "Thinking of the
fair little blossom that withered in its bloom. I have done wrong to
weep for him such bitter tears; for he was _your_ child, and had he
lived he might have cursed some woman's life as you have cursed mine."

This was uttered apparently without anger, and in modulated tones. But
no words of Althea had ever struck Thornton Rush like these. He was
speechless; and when she arose and passed him by to an adjoining room,
he stirred not hand nor foot. If she had expected then would fall the
arranged blow, she