And the
contrast with the feminine form he had ever in his mind's eye made his
wife's appearance painful to his aesthetic sense.
Schomberg walked about swearing and fuming for the purpose of screwing
his courage up to the sticking point.
"Hang me if I ought not to go now, at once, this minute, into his
bedroom, and tell him to be off--him and that secretary of his--early in
the morning. I don't mind a round game of cards, but to make a decoy of
my table d'hote--my blood boils! He came here because some lying rascal
in Manila told him I kept a table d'hote."
He said these things, not for Mrs. Schomberg's information, but simply
thinking aloud, and trying to work his fury up to a point where it would
give him courage enough to face "plain Mr. Jones."
"Impudent overbearing, swindling sharper," he went on. "I have a good
mind to--"
He was beside himself in his lurid, heavy, Teutonic manner, so unlike
the picturesque, lively rage of the Latin races; and though his eyes
strayed about irresolutely, yet his swollen, angry features awakened in
the miserable woman over whom he had been tyrannizing for years a fear
for his precious carcass, since the poor creature had nothing else but
that to hold on to in the world. She knew him well; but she did not know
him altogether. The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man
whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.
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