"Struck all of a heap indeed!" muttered Edwin.
"Wasn't he, Hilda?"
"I should just say he was! And I know he thinks it's all my fault," said Hilda.
Tertius Ingpen glanced at her an instant, and gave a short half-cynical laugh, which scarcely concealed his mild scorn of her feminine confusion of the argument.
"It's the usual thing!" said Ingpen, with scorn still more marked. At this stage of a dissertation he was inclined to be less a human being than the trumpet of a sacred message. "It's the usual thing! I never knew a happy marriage yet that didn't end in the same way." Then, perceiving that he was growing too earnest, and that his emphasis on the phrase 'happy marriage' had possibly been too sarcastic, he sniggered.
"I really don't see what marriage has to do with it," said Hilda, frowning.
"No, of course you don't," Ingpen agreed.
"If you'd said business----" she added.
"Now we've had the diagnosis," Edwin sardonically remarked, looking at his plate, "what's the prescription?" He was reflecting: "'Happy marriage,' does he call it! ... Why on earth does she say I think it's all her fault? I've not breathed a word."
"Well," replied Ingpen. "You live much too close to your infernal works. Why don't you get away, right away, and live out in the country like a sensible man, instead of sticking in this filthy hole--among all these new cottages? ... Barbarian hordes...."