“When you say resent, do you intend I should call him out?—fight him?”
“If I were the husband instead of the wife, it is what I should do,—ay,” cried she, wildly, “and thank Fortune that gave me the chance.”
“I don't think I'm going to show any such gratitude,” said he, with a cold grin. “If he made love to you, I take it he fancied you had given him some encouragement When you showed him that he was mistaken, he met his punishment. A woman always knows how to make a man look like a confounded fool at such a moment.”
“And is that enough?”
“Is what enough?”
“I ask, is it enough to make him look like a confounded fool? Will that soothe a wife's insulted pride, or avenge a husband's injured honor?”
“I don't know much of the wife's part; but as to the husband's share in the matter, if I had to fight every fellow who made up to you, my wedding garment ought to have been a suit of chain-armor.”
“A husband need not fight for his wife's flirtations; be-. sides, he can make her give these up if he likes. There are insults, however, that a man”—; and she said the word with a fierce emphasis—“resents with the same instinct that makes him defend his life.”
“I know well enough what he 'd say; he 'd say that there was nothing serious in it, that he was merely indulging in that sort of larking talk one offers to a pretty woman who does not seem to dislike it. The chances are he 'd turn the tables a bit, and say that you rather led him on than repressed him.”
“And would these pleas diminish your desire to have his heart's blood?” cried she, wild with passion and indignation together.