"Have you never thought," I said, driven at last to defend myself, "that there may be a side in the question for me also? I feel it as badly as you do—your all being different to me."
He stopped in his angry walk and looked at me. This idea was one of complete newness to him.
"Well, you'd better get out of it and change, for we sha'n't," he said, at last. "You owe everything to me. You would have been in the gutter now if I had not had the generosity to marry you."
I did not answer, but I suppose my eyes spoke, for he came close up to me and shook his fist in my face.
"I'll break that proud spirit of yours—see if I don't!" he roared—"daring to look at me like that! What good are you to me, I should like to know? You do not have a child, and, of all things, I want an heir!"
A low growl came from the hearth-rug, where Roy had been lying, and the dear dog rose and came to my side. I was afraid he would fly at Augustus, shaking his fist as if he was going to strike me. I put my hand on Roy's soft, black head and held his collar.
In a moment Augustus turned round and rushed to the door.
"I'll have that dog poisoned," he said, as he fled from the room.
I took up a volume of La Rochefoucauld, which was lying on the table near—grandmamma's copy—and I chanced to open it at this maxim:
"On n'est jamais si heureux ni si malheureux qu'on s'imagine."