"It will be very difficult to give her any advice."
"You may take it if you will that the fault is all mine. I would provide for her as I should be bound to do if by my own cruelty or my own misconduct I had driven her from me!" He had no idea as he said this that by his own cruelty and his own misconduct he was driving her from him.
"My conviction is that she will take nothing," said Mr. Gray.
"In a matter of business she must take it. The money must be paid to her, let her do what she will with it. Even though it should be thrown into the sea, I must pay it."
"I think you will find that she has a will of her own."
"And she will find that I have," said Mr. Western with a frown. It was exactly on this point that the husband and wife were being separated. He had thought that she had calculated that when once they were married she had carried her purpose in spite of his will. But he would let her understand that it was not so. She had so far succeeded that she was entitled to bear his name, but she had not mastered him in the matter, and should not do so.
"It is a thousand pities, Mr. Western, you will allow me to say so, but it is a thousand pities. A most handsome lady:—with a fine lady-like air! One in a thousand!"
Mr. Western could not endure to hear the catalogue of his wife's charms set forth to him. He did not want to be told by his lawyer that she was "handsome" and "one in a thousand"! In that respect their quarrel made no difference. No gentleman wishes another to assure him that his wife is one in a thousand. An old mother might say so, or an old aunt; hardly any one less near and less intimate could be allowed to do so. Mr. Western was aware that no man in the ordinary course of events would be less likely to offend in that way than Mr. Gray. But in this case Mr. Gray should not, he thought, have done it. He had come to Mr. Gray about money and not about his wife's beauty. "I hardly think we need discuss that," he said, still with a heavy frown on his brow. "Perhaps you will think over what I have said to you, and name a sum to-morrow."
"At the risk of making you angry I have to speak," continued Mr. Gray. "I knew your father, and have known you all your life. If this is to make her miserable, and if, as I gather, she has committed no great fault, will it not be—wicked?" Mr. Gray sat silent for a few moments, looking him in the face. "Have you consulted your own conscience, and what it will say to you after a time? She has given all that she has to you, though there has not been a shilling,—and no money can repay her. One fault is not pardonable,—one only fault."
"No, no. I do not accuse her."