And when your wife came flaunting down here with Poindexter before she'd quite got quit of you, I reckon they began to see the whole little game.

No, sir! I knew it wasn't on account of the gal! Why, when you came here to-night and told me quite nat'ral-like and easy how she went off in the ship, and then calmly ate your pie and drank your whiskey after it, I knew you didn't care for her.

There's my hand, Spence; you're a trump, even if you are a little looney, eh?
Why, what's up ?" Shallow and selfish as Tucker was, Patterson's words seemed like a revelation that shocked him as profoundly as it might have shocked a nobler nature.

The simple vanity and selfishness that made him unable to conceive any higher reason for his wife's loyalty than his own personal popularity and success, now that he no longer possessed that _eclat_, made him equally capable of the lowest suspicions.

He was a dishonored fugitive, broken in fortune and reputation--why should she not desert him?
He had been unfaithful to her from wildness, from caprice, from the effect of those fascinating qualities; it seemed to him natural that she should be disloyal from more deliberate motives, and he hugged himself with that belief.