Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/195

Rh Southerner named Fairfax; he had made a fortune in lumber; he was good-looking and had the caressing manner of his kind toward women; and for several months now he had been coming constantly to see Teresa. His time was about equally divided between the South and New York; and when he was away he wrote to her. She always showed the letters to Basil; they were friendly, gay, and interested. She admitted that she liked Fairfax very much; that she found him amusing and charming. Basil said that he liked her friendship with Fairfax; it was in line with all his ideas. He said once: "It's more exciting to drive a restive team than a quiet one; only you must look out they don't get away." His own interest in his wife seemed to increase. It had lost the quiet of the first year; it was more like the perpetual unrest of courtship. Her successes, her gaiety, intensified the appeal of her beauty to him. He seemed, too, to be less sure of her, and this pleased Teresa, and added to the light excitement of their life.

On the morning after their slumming expedition they took their coffee together amicably; Basil was gentle, but gloomy. Teresa questioned him keenly; he resisted; but at last his real feeling came out, and he confessed to a torturing jealousy.

"I didn't know I had it in me," he said savagely—angry, not with her, but with himself.