Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/104

96 "Forty sovereigns!" interrupted Dora. "The exact sum required for two months' hire of my poor little apartment!"

"And before the season was a quarter over I'd engage to sell her again for eighty," said Steven. You don't understand, Dora. Horse-dealing, in a small way, is part of my business, and for my horses to be seen I must ride them. 'Tis a business," he went on, "that my father and grandfather, and every one belonging to my name, have tried their hand at, and none of us made a bad thing of it yet."

"Business!" said Dot, with a flash of her great eyes. "Wonderfully pleasant business, I must say! To go for my health to Paris would be very insipid, compared to the 'business' of haunting, as well mounted as any man in Kent, at Katharine Fane's side!"

"Katharine Fane!" cried Steyen—I regret to add with an angry expletive closely following—"can't you leave her name alone? What has she to do with this senseless scheme about going to Paris?"

"Everything," said Dot, calmly; all her good temper returning at the sight of Steven's anger. "Or, rather, she has everything to do with the senseless scheme not being carried out. I am not playing at jealousy, Steven, and you are not playing at admiration of my cousin! When you first offered to marry me you told me you had loved her as well as a man could love a woman so far above him in rank; that there were things impossible to get over in a day, et cetera; but that you would try honestly to give me the first place in your heart—and so I accepted you."

Steven put his hand up, wearily, across his forehead.

"So I accepted you," went on Dot, "thinking, out of self-respect alone, that you would treat me with consideration when I was your wife—I who, at least, had never despised, never misled you!"

Here another exclamation not worthy, alas! to be recorded, broke from Steven's lips.

"Ah! it's very well to be violent, very well to use language like that," said Dora. "I say I am right, and that I have justice on my side. Why, your own servant, little as she likes me, pities me, and condemns your goings on and the way you leave me here alone. However, I'll say no more to you, Steven. I'll tell Kate, who has been good to me always, what I suffer, and ask her to have pity on me."

Steven grasped hold of her wrist with sudden passion. "Do you know what you are talking about?" he exclaimed. "Do you know what you mean when you threaten to expose this absurd discussion to your cousin?"

Dora came a little nearer to her husband again, and looked down, nothing daunted, into his eyes. "My dear," she said, "don't hurt