“You don’t consider me at all. You don’t consult my wishes.”
“I do better, my love. I consult our mutual interests.”
“You treat me like a child, an idiot! You let me know nothing of our plans. Why should we not leave this battered old ruin with the rest of the passengers? How and when are we to leave? If, for nothing but to make a decent response to Aunt Dorothy’s questions, I ought to be told something. I hardly know how to face her.”
“Well _I_ am not posing for that old darkey’s benefit,” he said, satirically smiling.
“This battered old ruin!” he exclaimed. “It will be the finest mansion in Mississippi by the time I am through with it.”
He cast his imperative eyes in approval over the great spaces of its open apartments. “And you, my dear, will be proud to be its chatelaine, and dispense its hospitalities.”
“Never,” she cried impetuously--“an abasement of pride for me!”
He changed color for a moment, and then held his ground.
“The ante-bellum glories will be revived in a style that has not been attempted in this country.”
“The ante-bellum glories--that were the Ducies’,” she said, with a flushed face and a flashing eye.
He was of so imperious a personality that he seldom encountered rebuke or contradiction. He was of such potential endowments that effort was unknown and failure was annihilated in his undertakings. He scarcely understood how he should deal with this unprecedented insolence, this revolt on the part of the being who had seemed to him most devoted, most adoring. The incense of worship had been dear to him,--and now the worshiper had lapsed to revilings and sacrilege!
“Paula, you are a fool absolute,” he said roughly.
“Ah, no--not I--not I!” she cried significantly. She lifted her head with a quick motion. The boat at the landing was getting up steam. She heard the exhaust of the engines, then the sonorous beat of the paddles on the water, and the swishing tumult of the waves as the wheels revolved.
“They are going,” she cried, “and we are left!”
She turned to him in agitation. He stood, splendid in his arrogant assurance, in his unrelenting dominance, his fine presence befitting the great hall which he would so amply grace in its restored magnificence. It was well for him that he was so handsome. Such a man, less graciously endowed, would have been intolerable in his arrogance, his selfishness, his brutality.