Mrs. Harbinger regarded him curiously, as if she could hardly make up her mind how such a person was to be treated.
"It is not customary to have scenes of that kind in our parlors," she answered, smiling.
"I know it," he said, with an accent of deep despair. "It was all my unfortunate temper that ran away with me. But you don't appreciate, Mrs. Harbinger, how a man feels when his wife has been made the subject of an infamous libel."
"But if you'll let me say so, Mr. Barnstable, I think you are going out of your way to find trouble. You are not the only man who has been separated from his wife, and the chances are that the author of 'Love in a Cloud' never heard of your domestic affairs at all."
"But he must have," protested Barnstable with growing excitement, "why--"
"Pardon me," she interrupted, "I wasn't done. I say that the chance of the author of that book knowing anything about your affairs is so small as to be almost impossible."
"But there were circumstances so exact! Why, all that scene--"
"Really, Mr. Barnstable," Mrs. Harbinger again interrupted, "you must not go about telling what scenes are true. That is more of a publishing of your affairs than any putting them in a novel could be."
His eyes stared at her from the folds and undulations of his face like two remarkably large jellyfish cast by the waves among sand heaps.
"But--but," he stammered, "what am I to do? How would you feel if it were your wife?"
She regarded him with a glance which gave him up as incorrigible, and half turned away her head.
"I'm sure I can't say," she responded. "I never had a wife."
Barnstable was too much excited to be restrained by the mild jest, and dashed on, beginning to gesticulate in his earnestness.
"And by such a man!" he ran on. "Why, Mrs. Harbinger, just look at this. Isn't this obliquitous!"
He pulled from one pocket a handful of letters, dashed through them at a mad speed, thrust them back and drew another handful from a second pocket, scrabbled through them, discarded them for the contents of a third pocket, and in the end came back to the first batch of papers, where he at last hit upon the letter he was in search of.
"Only this morning I got this letter from a friend in New York that knew the Count in Europe. He's been a perfect rake. He's a gambler and a duelist. There, you take it, Mrs. Harbinger, and read it. You'll see, then, how I felt when that sort of a man scandaled my wife."