“Why did you not tell him you wanted the mustard?”
“My dear!”
“Why not? There is nothing to be ashamed of in wanting mustard.”
“At one o’clock in the morning! I couldn’t do it. To tell you the truth, he wasn’t very civil, and I thought that he was—perhaps a little tipsy. Now, my dear, do go to sleep.”
“Why didn’t you get the mustard?”
“There was none there—nowhere at all about the room. I went down again and searched everywhere. That’s what took me so long. They always lock up those kind of things at these French hotels. They are too closefisted to leave anything out. When you first spoke of it I knew that it would be gone when I got there. Now, my dear, do go to sleep, because we positively must start in the morning.”
“That is impossible,” said he, jumping up in bed.
“We must go, my dear. I say that we must go. After all that has passed I wouldn’t not be with Uncle John and my cousin Robert tomorrow evening for more—more—more than I would venture to say.”
“Bother!” he exclaimed.
“It’s all very well for you to say that, Charles, but you don’t know. I say that we must go tomorrow, and we will.”
“I do believe you want to kill me, Mary.”
“That is very cruel, Charles, and most false, and most unjust. As for making you ill, nothing could be so bad for you as this wretched place, where nobody can get warm either day or night. If anything will cure your throat for you at once it will be the sea air. And only think how much more comfortable they can make you at Thompson Hall than anywhere in this country. I have so set my heart upon it, Charles, that I will do it. If we are not there tomorrow night Uncle John won’t consider us as belonging to the family.”
“I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Jane told me so in her letter. I wouldn’t let you know before because I thought it so unjust. But that has been the reason why I’ve been so earnest about it all through.”
It was a thousand pities that so good a woman should have been driven by the sad stress of circumstances to tell so many fibs. One after another she was compelled to invent them, that there might be a way open to her of escaping the horrors of a prolonged sojourn in that hotel. At length, after much grumbling, he became silent, and she trusted that he was sleeping. He had not as yet said that he would start at the required hour in the morning, but she was perfectly determined in her own mind that he should be made to do so. As he lay there motionless, and as she wandered about the room pretending to pack her things, she more than once almost resolved that she would tell him everything. Surely then he would be ready to make any effort. But there came upon her an idea that he might perhaps fail to see all the circumstances, and that, so failing, he would insist on remaining that he might tender some apology to the injured gentleman. An apology might have been very well had she not left him there in his misery—but what apology would be possible now? She would have to see him and speak to him, and everyone in the hotel would know every detail of the story. Everyone in France would know that it was she who had gone to the strange man’s bedside, and put the mustard plaster on the strange man’s throat in the dead of night! She could not tell the story even to her husband, lest even her husband should betray her.
Her own sufferings at the present moment were not light. In her perturbation of mind she had foolishly resolved that she would not herself go to bed. The tragedy of the night had seemed to her too deep for personal comfort. And then how would it be were she to sleep, and have no one to call her? It was imperative that she should have all her powers ready for thoroughly arousing him. It occurred to her that the servant of the hotel would certainly run her too short of time. She had to work for herself and for him too, and therefore she would not sleep. But she was very cold, and she put on first a shawl over her dressing-gown and then a cloak. She could not consume all the remaining hours of the night in packing one bag and one portmanteau, so that at last she sat down on the narrow red cotton velvet sofa, and, looking at her watch, perceived that as yet it was not much past two o’clock. How was she to get through those other three long, tedious, chilly hours?
Then there came a voice from the bed—“Ain’t you coming?”
“I hoped you were asleep, my dear.”
“I haven’t been asleep at all. You’d better come, if you don’t mean to make yourself as ill as I am.”
“You are not so very bad, are you, darling?”
“I don’t know what you call bad. I never felt my throat so choked in my life before!” Still as she listened she thought that she remembered his throat to have been more choked. If the husband of her bosom could play with her feelings and deceive her on such an occasion as this—then, then—then she thought that she would rather not have any husband of her bosom at all. But she did creep into bed, and lay down beside him without saying another
