"But--but," he stammered, "what am I to do? How would you feel if it were your wife?" She regarded him with a glance which gave him up as incorrigible, and half turned away her head. "I'm sure I can't say," she responded. "I never had a wife." Barnstable was too much excited to be restrained by the mild jest, and dashed on, beginning to gesticulate in his earnestness. "And by such a man!" he ran on. "Why, Mrs. Harbinger, just look at this. Isn't this obliquitous!" He pulled from one pocket a handful of letters, dashed through them at a mad speed, thrust them back and drew another handful from a second pocket, scrabbled through them, discarded them for the contents of a third pocket, and in the end came back to the first batch of papers, where he at last hit upon the letter he was in search of. "Only this morning I got this letter from a friend in New York that knew the Count in Europe. He's been a perfect rake. He's a gambler and a duelist. There, you take it, Mrs. Harbinger, and read it. You'll see, then, how I felt when that sort of a man scandaled my wife." "But I thought that you received the letter only this morning," suggested Mrs. Harbinger, with a smile. Her companion was too thoroughly excited to be interrupted, and dashed on. "You take the letter, Mrs. Harbinger, and read it for yourself. Then you show it to your friends. Let people know what sort of a man they are entertaining and making much of. Damme--I beg your pardon; my temper's completely roused up!--it makes me sick to see people going on so over anything that has a title on it. Why, damme--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Harbinger; I really beg your pardon!--in America if a man has a title he can rob henroosts for a living, and be the rage in society." Mrs. Harbinger reached out her hand deliberately, and took the letter which was thus thrust at her. She had it safe in her possession before she spoke again. "I shall be glad to see the letter," she said, "because I am curious to know about Count Shimbowski. That he is what he pretends to be in the way of family I am sure, for I have seen his people in Rome." "Oh, he is a Count all right," Barnstable responded; "but that doesn't make him any better." "As for the book," she pursued calmly, "you are entirely off the track. The Count cannot possibly have written it. Just think of his English." "I've known men that could write English that couldn't speak it decently." "Besides, he hasn't been in the country long enough to have written it. If he did write it, Mr. Barnstable, how in the world could he know anything about your affairs? It seems to me, if I may say so, that you might apply a little common sense to the question before you get into a rage over things that cannot be so."