"You drove him to it."
"That's not so! He's free, white and twenty-one; he can do as he pleases elsewhere, but he'll do as I say while he's in my house!"
"My house, please!"
"We've had that argument before and you've had precious little change out of it! As for Copley—let him rustle his own living or starve until he learns to obey my wishes!"
"You won't consider mine?"
"No!" The word was like a thunderclap.
"Very well." She held herself erect to every inch of her slim height, her steadfast gaze leveled at him from beneath straight brows. "I warn you, Simon, that you are going too far. I don't know if you realize all the brutalities, the ignominies, that I've suffered from you since we were married. Much kinder if you'd beaten me. It hasn't seemed possible to me that you can have realized—! Yours is a very curious nature—I've had to make allowances—often—" Her voice faded into silence.
"What are you going to do about it?"
She jumped beneath the lash of that crisp question.
"I don't know—yet." Abruptly, she turned on her heel and left the room.