"Now, now, Ulgenie, do not be so hasty. You know how patient I am."
"And what am I, then, to be married to such a musty husband? Your wife is courted before your very eyes; you see nothing! you hear nothing!—I could be unfaithful to you, and even then you would close your eyes. O, fate! O bitter life! such a husband can drive a wife to desperation, and from thence it is but one step to madness."
"Who is again playing the gallant to you?"
And in this "again," reposed an expression which displayed that such scenes were not new to him. Mistress Ulrica, like other women, possessed her weak points, one of which was that if a gentleman happened to converse with her pleasantly, she immediately imagined that he was desperately in love with her. But to her great sorrow, Mrs. Ulrica, although she possessed entire control over her husband's actions, never could make an Othello of him. Had Mr. Fabian but known her desire in this respect, he could have deprived his wife of her sceptre, and taken up the reins of matrimonial government himself.
A tyrannical husband would have been able to bend Mrs. Ulrica like a reed, and to have trodden her under his feet which she would willingly have kissed; but now Mr. Fabian kissed her feet, and therefore she crushed him to the dust, and although she did not merit the reproach that Desdemona received, it was, nevertheless, no fault of his. But of what use would it have been even should she have merited it? Othello was a fanciful creation which her husband of all men would have been least willing to personate.
"My Fabian," she would say to herself, "my Fabian can never prove unfaithful to me. He is too much of an idler, and thinks only of his sofa, pipe and tobacco."
But we will resume the thread of the worthy couple's conversation.
"Who is again making love to you?" inquired Mr. Fabian again.
Mrs. Ulrica uplifted her reproachful eyes to Heaven. "He asks who! he has not even observed it!"
"No, my dear wife, I have not."