I found him asleep on the lawn; of course he had no business upon the premises; but he's so far gone that I'm taking him something to pull him together before I turn him off." "I should have said," remarked Rachel, thoughtfully, "that tea or coffee would have been better for him than spirits." Steel smiled indulgently across the tray.
"Most ladies would say the same," he replied, "but very few men." "And why didn't you bring him into the house," pursued Rachel, looking her husband very candidly in the face, "instead of taking him all that way to the lake, and giving yourself so much more trouble than was necessary ?" The smile broadened upon Steel's thin lips, perhaps because it had entirely vanished from his glittering eyes.
"That," said he, "is a question you would scarcely ask if you had seen the poor creature for yourself.

I don't intend you to see him; he is a rather saddening spectacle, and one of a type for which one can do absolutely nothing permanent.

And now, if you are quite satisfied, I shall proceed, with your permission, to get rid of him in my own way." It was seldom indeed that Steel descended to a display of sarcasm at his wife's expense, though few people who came much in contact with him escaped an occasional flick from a tongue that could be as bitter as it was habitually smooth.

His last words were therefore as remarkable as his first; both were exceptions to a rule; and though Rachel moved away without replying, feeling that there was indeed no more to be said, she could not but dwell upon the matter in her mind.

Satisfied she certainly was not; and yet there was so much mystery between them, so many instinctive reservations upon either side, that very little circumstance of the kind could not carry an ulterior significance, but many must be due to mere force of habit.
Rachel hated the condition of mutual secretiveness upon which she had married this man; it was antagonistic to her whole nature; she longed to repudiate it, and to abolish all secrets between them.