Page:The Private Life, Lord Beaupré, The Visits (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/161

Rh added. "But as soon as you begin to realize what a lot of good you do me you won't want to drop it. That is, if you're what I take you for!" laughed his lordship.

If a third person had been present at this conversation—and there was nothing in it surely that might not have been spoken before a trusty listener—that person would perhaps have thought, from the immediate expression of Mary Gosselin's face, that she was on the point of exclaiming, "You take me for too big a fool!" No such ungracious words in fact, however, passed her lips; she only said, after an instant, "What reason do you propose to give, on the day you need one, for our rupture?"

Her interlocutor stared. "To you, do you mean?"

"I sha'n't ask you for one. I mean to other people."

"Oh, I'll tell them you're sick of me. I'll put everything on you, and you'll put everything on me."

"You have worked it out!" Mary exclaimed.