"You are very good; but don't you think your admission comes rather late? Pardon me one minute,"--Barbara had made a sign as though about to speak,--"I'll not detain you more than one minute. I wooed you as humbly as any rightminded man could, more humbly than some would think fit and proper; but let that pass. Before I asked you to share my life, I showed you plainly what that life was; I did not withhold one jot of its difficulties, its restrictions, its poverty, if you will. I pointed out to you plainly and unsparingly the sacrifices you would have to make, certain luxuries--little perhaps in themselves, but difficult to do without, from constant use--which you would have to give up. I put before you what I knew would prove (as it has proved) the fact, that, if you married me, the set of people amongst whom you had always lived would consider you had demeaned yourself, and would give you up. I pointed all this plainly out to you,--did I not?"
"You did."
"And you, having heard it all, and weighed it as much as women with any thing like heart in them do weigh such matters, agreed to link your lot with mine. Good. We married, and I brought you to your home; not a brilliant home by any means, not a fairy bower likely to catch the fancy of a young girl, but still, I make bold to say, a comfortable enough home, and one out of which, mind you, my mother--one of the common-minded, commonplace people so sneered at by your superior race--removed, of her own free will, in order that you might be its sole mistress. You follow me?" he asked, for her head had drooped again and he could not see her face.
She murmured some indistinct answer, and as he looked across he thought he saw the trace of tears upon her cheeks.
"What was the result?" he continued. "From that time out, you began to change. There were great allowances to be made for you, I grant. The place was dull, the house small, the furniture meagre; the persons amongst whom you were thrown strange and entirely different from any you had previously mixed with. But the house was your own; the furniture sufficient for our wants; the people anxious to receive you kindly and hospitably, to make you feel welcome, to do any thing for you for my sake. My mother, in some respects a peculiar woman, came out of the semi-seclusion in which she had lived for years, to show her regard for you; she wanted you to share in that wealth of affection which she lavished on me; she wanted you to be as much her daughter as I was her son. Did you respond to this in any way? No. Did you try to content yourself with the lot which you had accepted? No. Did you, knowing full well how all were striving for you, endeavour to accommodate yourself to, and make the best of, circumstances? No, no, no! You sit moping and indolent in your house, leaving things to go on as they best can; nursing your grief and disappointment and rage until you see every thing through a distorted medium; you alienate my friends by your undisguised contempt; you affront my mother by openly spurning her proffered affection. All this you do, wilfully or foolishly ignoring the fact that in each and every act you inflict a stab on me--on me, slaving for you, loving you, adoring you!"
"Oh, Frank, Frank!"
"Yet one minute, if you please; I will not detain you longer; I should never have sought this opportunity,"--Barbara winced,--"but having it, I must in self defence avail myself of it to the utmost. Not merely do you pursue the line of conduct I have just described, but you forget yourself and annoy me in a far greater degree. I am told of your constantly receiving visits from a gentleman during the hours of my absence from home. I mention this mildly, and beg you to hint to him to call at some other time. You are offended at this; and after a discussion, I acknowledge I may have been hasty, and the subject is dropped. I take you to a party where you meet some of your old friends; your spirits revive; you are more like your old self than you have been since your marriage; and you walk off; away from all the rest of the party, with this same gentleman, with whom I myself see you in singularly earnest conversation. I again speak to you on this point; you deny that I have any occasion for complaint, and I again give way. And now what return do you make me for my kindness, my trust, my confidence? You accuse me of receiving letters, which as your husband I should not receive: and you demand to know the purport of the letters, and the name of the writer. I give a general denial to your suspicions; but as to telling you what you require, my pride--"
"Oh, even you have pride, then?" said Barbara, with a half-sneer.
"Proper pride! my honour, if you will,--for my honour was pledged in the matter--forbade it. Then, acting on a wild and miserable impulse,--without one thought or care for me, for yourself, for our name and reputation,--you took a step which has brought misery on my life. You left my house, your home,--left it and left me to be the talk, the object of the gossip, and the pity of all who heard the wretched story. Not content with that, you come to this house, and I am given to understand that, since you have been here, you have been constantly visited by the man I have before spoken of--Captain Lyster!"
No drooping head now! Barbara is standing erect as a dart. Her cheeks dead white, her lips compressed, her eyes flaming fire.