"I had thought that I got on very well with Mrs. Parker. If you can eat your dinner with them, I'm sure that I can. You do not seem to like him altogether, and I wish you had got a partner more to your taste."
"Taste, indeed! When you come to this kind of thing it isn't a matter of taste. The fact is that I am in that fellow's hands to an extent I don't like to think of, and don't see my way out of it unless your father will do as he ought to do. You altogether refuse to help me with your father, and you must, therefore, put up with Sexty Parker and his wife. It is quite on the cards that worse things may come even than Sexty Parker." To this she made no immediate answer, but walked on, increasing her pace, not only unhappy, but also very angry. It was becoming a matter of doubt to her whether she could continue to bear these repeated attacks about her father's money. "I see how it is," he continued. "You think that a husband should bear all the troubles of life, and that a wife should never be made to hear of them."
"Ferdinand," she said, "I declare I did not think that any man could be so unfair to a woman as you are to me."
"Of course! Because I haven't got thousands a year to spend on you I am unfair."
"I am content to live in any way that you may direct. If you are poor, I am satisfied to be poor. If you are even ruined, I am content to be ruined."
"Who is talking about ruin?"
"If you are in want of everything, I also will be in want and will never complain. Whatever our joint lot may bring to us I will endure, and will endeavour to endure with cheerfulness. But I will not ask my father for money, either for you or for myself. He knows what he ought to do. I trust him implicitly."
"And me not at all."
"He is, I know, in communication with you about what should be done. I can only say,—tell him everything."
"My dear, that is a matter in which it may be possible that I understand my own interest best."