He smiled, but his face flushed deeply. Her bait, her veiled
threat, affected him little. But all that was unsaid pulled him like a
powerful magnet. He struggled for fully twenty minutes with the
temptation to ride to that paradise on the hill as fast as his horse
would carry him. But although he usually got into mischief when absent
from Betsey, contradictorily he was fonder of his wife when she was
remote; moreover, her helplessness appealed to him, and he rejected the
idea of deliberate disloyalty, even while his pulses hammered and the
spirit of romance within him moved turbulently in its long sleep. He
glanced out of the window. Beyond the tree-tops gleamed the river; above
were the hills, with their woods and grassy intervals. It was an
exquisite country, green and primeval; a moderate summer, the air warm
but electric. The nights were magnificent. Hamilton dreamed for a time,
then burned the letter in a fit of angry impatience.
"I have nothing better to do!" he thought. "Good God!"
An answer was imperative. He took a long ride first, however, then
scrawled a few hasty lines, as if he had found just a moment in which to
read her letter, but thanking her warmly for her interest and
information; ending with a somewhat conscience-stricken hope for the
instructive delight of her personal acquaintance when he should find the
leisure to be alive once more.
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