“Why,” she wailed passionately, taking no heed of his badinage; “why am I treated thus! Why am I kept here on this hateful plantation, in this remote parish, without life, without society, without pleasure of any kind. Nothing but this routine of dull farm life. No faces but your servants’ and your overseer’s around me. No company but these planters, these planters’ wives, these planters’ daughters, these people that ride over here sometimes, that I fatigue myself with visiting, that I care nothing about, anyway. Bad enough to come here once a year for the hot months—but three years, winter and summer, have I spent here. Three, Lafitte. Not once have I been in New Orleans for three years. Not once near the house where seven years of marriage with you were endurable with friends, with society, with life, with pleasures, with things I cared for, and which diverted me. Cut off from them all. You go when you please. Weeks, months, you are away, and leave me here sick, mad, frantic with ennui. Here, up the river, alone, what have I here to enjoy?” “Here, my Josephine,” he replied, in an unruffled voice; “here, do you ask? What have you here? Here you have books, novels, without end, music in reams, your guitar, your piano, this elegant simplicity, this charming country prospect, your own sweet thoughts, the pleasures of imagination, the pleasures of memory, the pleasures—yes, even the pleasures of hope. And then, too,” sinking his voice to a softer tone, while his smile became a shade more sardonic and his eyes more cruel, “then, too, you have me.” “You,” she raved, her pallid face convulsed with the refluent fury, and her eyes flashing. “You! Yes, I have you. Whom I hate, whom I loathe, whom I abhor! Yes, I have you; you who torture me.” “I who torture you?” interrupted Mr. Lafitte blandly. “And yet, my angel, they say we are a model couple. They are never tired of talking of my unvarying gallant courtesy to you. You, yourself, could not name this moment in a court of law one word or action that would seem incompatible with the tenderest affection for you.” “I know it,” she moaned. “Yes, that is the misery of it. I am insulted, I am profaned, I am outraged, I am tortured till I could go mad, or kill myself; and it is all done—my God! I know not how. Done with smoothness and calmness and courtesy; done with civility; done with sweet stabbing words. Others could only see the sweetness; none but I can feel the stabs. But they kill me daily, and you know it. Subtle and sweet is your cruelty to me—cruel, cruel devil that you are! Cruel to me, cruel to your slaves, cruel to everyone.” “Cruel to my slaves, eh,” said Mr. Lafitte, tranquilly, his voice still equable, his face still wearing its sardonic smile: “Cruel to you and cruel to my slaves. Antony, for example.”