“Saw what?
“How can you lie there in the bed and ask me? Saw what, indeed! Of course it was a planned thing! - regularly settled before you left London. Oh yes! I like your innocence, Mr. Caudle; not knowing what I’m talking about. It’s a heart-breaking thing for a woman to say of her own husband; but you’ve been a wicked man to me. Yes: and all your tossing and tumbling about in the bed won’t make it any better.
“Oh, it’s easy enough to call a woman ‘a dear soul.’ I must be very dear, indeed, to you, when you bring down Miss Prettyman to - there now; you needn’t shout like a wild savage. Do you know that you’re not in your own house - do you know that we’re in lodgings? What do you suppose the people will think of us? You needn’t call out in that manner, for they can hear every word that’s said. What do you say?
“Why don’t I hold my tongue then?
“To be sure; anything for an excuse with you. Anything to stop my mouth. Miss Prettyman’s to follow you here, and I’m to say nothing. I know she has followed you; and if you were to go before a magistrate, and take a shilling oath to the contrary, I wouldn’t believe you. No, Caudle; I wouldn’t.
“Very well, then?
“Ha! what a heart you must have, to say ‘very well’; and after the wife I’ve been to you. I’m to be brought from my own home - dragged down here to the sea-side - to be laughed at before the world - don’t tell me. Do you think I didn’t see how she looked at you - how she puckered up her farthing mouth - and - what?
“Why did I kiss her, then?
“What’s that to do with it? Appearances are one thing, Mr. Caudle; and feelings are another. As if women can’t kiss one another without meaning anything by it! And you - I could see you looked as cold and as formal at her as - well, Caudle! I wouldn’t be the hypocrite you are for the world!
“There, now; I’ve heard all that story. I daresay she did come down to join her brother. How very lucky, though, that you should be here! Ha! ha! how very lucky that - ugh! ugh! ugh! and with the cough I’ve got upon me - oh, you’ve a heart like a sea-side flint! Yes, that’s right. That’s just like your humanity. I can’t catch a cold, but it must be my own fault - it must be my thin shoes. I daresay you’d like to see me in ploughman’s boots; ’twould be no matter to you how I disfigured myself. Miss Prettyman’s foot, now, would be another thing - no doubt.