‘You may try, but I do not think you will succeed,’ she exclaimed. ‘Indeed,’ she cried, raising her voice, but immediately and nervously subduing it, ‘I hope you will _not_ try, for it is not hard to foresee what must follow. You will merely make his resolution more stubborn by rendering it angrier than it is, and then there might come a coolness between you--indeed, something worse than coolness on his side; for in such minds as your cousin’s it is impossible to imagine what dangerous ideas opposition may provoke.’ I bowed in recognition of the truth of this, admiring in her a quality of sagacity that, to the fancy at all events of a young man, as I then was, would gather a new excellence from her graces. She looked at me with a tremble of light in her gaze that vexed its serenity. ‘Besides, Mr. Monson, we must consider Henrietta.’ ‘It is natural you should think wholly of her,’ said I. ‘Not wholly. But this pursuit _may_ end in rescuing her from Colonel Hope-Kennedy. It gives her future a chance. But you would have her husband sit quietly at home.’ ‘Well, not exactly,’ I interrupted. ‘What would you have him do?’ she asked. ‘Get a divorce,’ said I. ‘He won’t do that,’ she exclaimed. ‘Marriage in his sight is a sacrament. Do not you know his views, Mr. Monson?’ ‘You see, I have long lost sight of him.’ ‘Well, I _know_ he would not seek a divorce. He would be mad indeed,’ she cried, flushing to her brows, ‘to give my sister the liberty she wants and Colonel Hope-Kennedy----’ She faltered and stopped, biting her underlip, with the hot emotions which mounted to her face imparting a sudden air of womanly maturity to her girlish beauty, whilst her breast rose and fell to her ireful breathing. ‘This is no mad pursuit,’ she continued after a brief pause, speaking softly. ‘What is there unreasonable in a man’s determination to follow his wife that he may come as swiftly as the ship, the coach, the railway will permit him between her and a life of shame and remorse and misery?’ As she spoke, my cousin arrived, holding a great meerschaum pipe in his hand. She at once rose and left the table with a faint smile at me and a glance on top of it that was as eloquent as a whisper of regret at having been betrayed into warmth. Well, thought I, you are a sweet little woman, and it is highly probable that before I have been a week in your company I shall be head over heels in love with you. But for all that, you fair and artless creature, I don’t agree with you in your views of this chase. Suppose Wilfrid recaptures his wife--what is he going to do with her? She is not a lunatic; he cannot lock her up--but I broke off to the approach of my cousin, fetched my pipe, and went on deck with him.