over him now that he should have liked extremely to spend several days on the lake of Como. The place struck him as much more delicious than it had done while he chafed the day before at the absence of his relations. He was angry with the Englishman for forcing him to leave it and still more angry with him for showing so little responsibility or even perception in regard to the matter. It occurred to him while he was in this humour that it might be a good plan to make himself so disagreeable that Sir Rufus would take to his heels and never reappear, fleeing before the portent of such an insufferable brother-in-law. But this plan demanded powers of execution which Macarthy did not flatter himself that he possessed: he felt that it was impossible to him to divest himself of his character of a polished American gentleman.
If he found himself dissenting from most of the judgments and opinions which Sir Rufus Chasemore happened to express in the course of their conversation there was nothing perverse in that: it was a simple fact apparently that the Englishman had nothing in common with him and was predestined to enunciate propositions to which it was impossible for him to assent. Moreover how could he assent to propositions enunciated in that short, offhand, clipping tone, with the words running into each other and the voice rushing up and down the scale? Macarthy, who spoke very slowly, with great distinctness and in general with great correctness, was annoyed not only by his companion's intonation but by the odd and, as it seemed to him, licentious application that he made of certain words. He struck him as wanting in reverence for the language,
