For a moment she thought of telling him that the Ames’ were going to stop here: then, with entirely misplaced caution, she thought wiser to keep that to herself. She, guilty in the real reason for wishing to remain here, though coherent and logical enough in the account she had given him of her reason, thought, grossly wronging him, that some seed of suspicion might hereby enter her husband’s mind.
“There is sure to be some one here,” she said. “The Althams, for instance, do not go away till the middle of August.”
“You do not particularly care for them,” said he.
“No, but they are better than nobody. All day at Harrogate I have nobody. It is not companionship to sit in the room with you and Elsie playing chess. Besides, the Westbournes will be at home. I shall go over there a great deal, I dare say. Also I shall be in my own house, which is comfortable, and which I am fond of. Our lodgings at Harrogate disgust me. They are all oilcloth and plush; there is nowhere to sit when they are clearing away.”
His face was still clouded.
“But it is so odd for a married woman to stop alone like that,” he said.
“I think it is far odder for her husband to want her to spend a month of loneliness and boredom in lodgings,” she said. “Because I have never complained, Wilfred, you think I haven’t detested it. But on thinking it over it seems to me more sensible to tell you how I detest it, and ask you that I shouldn’t go.”
He was silent a moment.
“Very well, little woman,” he said at length. “You shall do as you please.”
Instantly the cold precision of her speech changed. She gave that little sigh of conscious content with which she often woke in the morning, and linked her arm into his again.