‘Strange to say, you were the cause of our first open quarrel, about six months ago.’
‘I? How?’
‘You know you had not been to Rivermouth for some four years or more. But I remembered you perfectly, and used always to ask George about you when he came down from London. At last, on this occasion, he happened to say he had a recent photograph of you. I got him to show it to me, and then I wanted to keep it. He objected; I persisted, and finally his jealousy was aroused.
‘“You always liked Prescott better than me,” he said.
‘“I haven’t even seen him for five years,” I said. “I remember him as an old friend, and I don’t see why you should mind my taking an interest in him.”
‘“Taking an interest!” he scoffed back. “I wish you would take an interest in me. You have never asked me for my photograph, that I recollect.”
‘But I needn’t tell you all that we said. It ended in his accusing me of not loving him, and in my saying that he was at liberty to find someone else, if he was dissatisfied with me.
‘But he—he would not take the release. He altered his tone all at once and fell at my feet, protesting that he loved me above all others, and that nothing should ever separate us.
‘So things went on, he alternately courting me and threatening me, I turning from coldness to dislike, and from dislike to detestation. But I hadn’t the courage to break my bondage, intolerable as I sometimes felt it. Perhaps I should never have shaken myself free but for his own action in bringing things to a crisis. Our letters had been friendly for some time, and, at last, in the month of May, he threw out a suggestion in one that it was time to think of our marriage.