“I’m sure, I’m very—very sorry”—
“Not you, indeed. No—no. You don’t care how I’m bitten; or, for that matter, who bites me. But that is not what I was going to say. What I was going to observe is this—Neither you nor any man in this world shall make a cat’s-paw of me.”
“I never thought of it. Never entered my head,” said Jericho, screwing his skull into the pillow.
“Nothing but a cat’s-paw, and I’m not come to that. I was deceived at the altar,” said Mrs. Jericho: “grossly, shamefully played upon; and I have been deceived ever since.”
“For the matter of that,” cried Jericho, a little doggedly, “I was deceived too. Of course, everybody said you’d money; and so I was deceived—grossly deceived,” cried Jericho, melting a little with a sense of his injury. “I don’t want to return to the subject, Mrs. Jericho. But of course I thought you rich.”
“Mercenary wretch! If the girls were only stirring, I’d get up,” was the threat. “I’m sure it’s time.”
“Just as you like, Mrs. Jericho: only be good enough to let me go to sleep. Bed,” said Jericho, making himself vigorously up for rest, “bed isn’t the place to talk in.”
“I don’t wish to talk,” replied Mrs. Jericho, “I don’t wish to exchange a word with such a creature as you are. All I want to know is this—When can you let me have some money?”
“Money!” gasped Jericho.
“Money!” repeated Mrs. Jericho, with inexorable resolution.