"Why not? Why shall I not meet him?" she inquired, raising her eyebrows in disdain.
"Because I forbid you." He spoke shortly, as if that ended the matter.
Leonora shrugged her shoulders a little, with an expression of pity, and shifted her position, so as to face him.
"You forbid me, do you?" she asked, lowering her voice.
"Mais oui! I forbid you to see him anywhere."
"Do you know what you are saying?" she asked, and there was a tone of menace in her words.
"Oh, perfectly," answered her husband calmly; "and I will also take care that you obey me--bien entendu!"
"Then it is war?" asked Leonora, as though she hoped it might be, and to the knife.
"If you disobey, it is war," said Marcantonio, "but you will not."
"Because I will prevent you. It is useless to prolong this discussion."
"Mon Dieu, I ask nothing better than to finish it as soon as possible," said Leonora.
"In that case, good-night," replied Marcantonio, rising.
"Good-night," answered Leonora, still seated. "I am not sleepy yet. You are not afraid that Monsieur Batiscombe will be announced after you are gone to bed?"
She spoke scornfully, as though trying to drive a wound with every word. She thought she knew her husband, and she felt triumphant.
Marcantonio did not answer, and withdrew in silence. In a few hours his whole character had developed, and he was a very different man from the Marcantonio of that morning. He had passed through a few hours of a desperate crisis, and had come out of it with an immovable determination to clear up the whole affair, and to force his wife to break off her intimacy with Batiscombe. Even now he could believe no evil,--only the foolish infatuation of a young woman for a man who had the romantic faculty strongly developed. It would cost an effort to break it off,--and Leonora would be very much annoyed, of course,--but it must be done. And so Marcantonio had gone about it in the boldest and simplest way, by attacking her directly. He congratulated himself, for at one stroke he had ascertained the truth of the servant's statement, and had gone through the much dreaded scene with his wife. Henceforth she knew what to expect; he had declared himself as a jealous husband, and had said he would be obeyed. He went to bed in the consciousness that he had done the best thing possible under the circumstances, and promising himself an early explanation with Batiscombe.