And then Carmen?  Was she a little less dependent on him, in this wide horizon, than in New York?  And had he noticed a little disposition to patronize on two or three occasions?  It was absurd.  He laughed at himself for such an idea.  Old Eschelle’s daughter patronize him!  And yet there was something.  She was very confidential with Mavick.  They seemed to have a great deal in common.  It so happened that even in the little expeditions of sightseeing these two were thrown much together, and at times when the former relations of Jack and Carmen should have made them comrades.  They had a good deal to say to each other, and momentarily evidently serious things, and at receptions Jack had interrupted their glances of intelligence.  But what stuff this was!  He jealous of the attentions of his friend to another man’s wife!  If she was a coquette, what did it matter to him?  Certainly he was not jealous.  But he was irritated.

One day after a round of receptions, in which Jack had been specially disgruntled, and when he was alone in the drawing-room of the hotel with Carmen, his manner was so positively rude to her that she could not but notice it.  There was this trait of boyishness in Jack, and it was one of the weaknesses that made him loved, that he always cried out when he was hurt.

Did Carmen resent this?  Did she upbraid him for his manner?  Did she apologize, as if she had done anything to provoke it?  She sank down wearily in a chair and said: 

“I’m so tired.  I wish I were back in New York.”

“You don’t act like it,” Jack replied, gruffly.

“No.  You don’t understand.  And now you want to make me more miserable.  See here, Mr. Delancy,” and she started up in her seat and turned to him, “you are a man of honor.  Would you advise me to make an enemy of Mr. Mavick, knowing all that he does know about Mr. Henderson’s affairs?”

“I don’t see what that has got to do with it,” said Jack, wavering.  “Lately your manner—­”

“Nonsense!” cried Carmen, springing up and approaching Jack with a smile of animation and trust, and laying her hand on his shoulder.  “We are old, old friends.  And I have just confided to you what I wouldn’t to any other living being.  There!” And looking around at the door, she tapped him lightly on the cheek and ran out of the room.

Whatever you might say of Carmen, she had this quality of a wise person, that she never cut herself loose from one situation until she was entirely sure of a better position.

For one reason or another Jack’s absence was prolonged.  He wrote often, he made bright comments on the characters and peculiarities of the capital, and he said that he was tired to death of the everlasting whirl and scuffle.  People plunged in the social whirlpool always say they are weary of it, and they complain bitterly of its exactions and its tax on their time and strength.  Edith judged, especially from the complaints, that her husband was enjoying