"The doctor's lying down. But she'll not rest without seeing you; she's fretting so."
"Have you been letting her talk about it and excite herself? Have you been talking to her yourself?"
"How can we help talking about it?" Mrs. Mumple moaned.
"It's infernally silly—infernally!" he exclaimed in exasperation. "Well, I must go to her, I suppose." He turned to Jeremy. "It'll be better if you'll keep Mrs. Mumple with you. We'll get the nurse to go to Sibylla."
"I can't leave her as she is," said Mrs. Mumple, threatening a fresh outburst of tears.
Grantley walked out of the room, muttering savagely.
The strain of irritation, largely induced by Mrs. Mumple's lachrymosely reproachful glances and faithful doglike persistency, robbed him of the tenderness by which alone he might possibly have won his wife's willing obedience and perhaps convinced her reason through her love. He used his affection now, not in appeal, but as an argumentative point. He found in her a hard opposition; she seemed to look at him with a sort of dislike, a mingling of fear and wonder. Thus she listened in silence to his cold marshalling of the evidences of his love and his deliberate enforcing of the claims it gave him. Seeing that he made no impression, he grew more impatient and more imperious, ending with a plain intimation that he would discuss the question no further.
"You'll make me the murderess of my child," she said.
The gross irrational exaggeration drove him to worse bitterness.
"I've no intention of running even the smallest risk of being party to the murder of my wife," he retorted.