"Oh, I know," she cried, "that you care more for her than for me! A pink-and-white face, that's all you value! More than wife, or—or—anything in the world. More than the honour of a gentleman. She's a devil; a sly, sleek little devil! She has got your love away from me. She has made you tell lies, and be cruel to me. But I'll expose her to all the world."
"What, in the name of all that's incomprehensible, has put this craze into your head against Rhoda Maxfield? It's the wildest thing!"
"Oh, Ancram! you can't deceive me any longer. I know—I have seen. She came on the sly to see you at the office. You used to go to her when you told me you had to be busy at the office. I watched you, I followed you all down Whitford High Street one night, and found out that you were cheating me."
"Ha! And you also opened my desk at the office, and took out letters and papers! Do you know what people are called who do such things?" said Algernon, now in a white heat of anger.
She drew back and looked at him. "Yes," she said, "I know."
"Have you no shame, then? No common sense? You attack a young lady—yes, a lady! A far better lady than you are!—of whom you take it into your head to be jealous, merely because she is pretty and admired by everybody. By me amongst the everybodies. Why not? I didn't lose my eyesight when I married you. You talk about my not loving you——! Do you think you go the way to make me do anything but detest the sight of you? You disgrace me in the town. You disgrace me before my clerk in the office. You and your relations persecuted me into marrying you, and now you haven't even the decency to behave like a rational being, but make yourself a laughing-stock, and me a butt for contemptuous pity in having tied myself to such a woman. One would have thought you would try to make some amends for the troubles I have been plunged into by my marriage."
She put her hands up one to each side of her head, and held them there tightly pressed. "Ancram," she said, "do you detest the sight of me?"
"You've tried your best to make me."
"Have you no spark of kindness or affection for me in your heart—not one?"
"Come, Castalia, let us have done with this! I thoroughly dislike and object to 'scenes' of any kind. You have a taste for them, unfortunately. What you have to do now is to do as I bid you, and try to make your peace by begging Rhoda's pardon, and so trying to undo a little of the mischief your insane temper has caused."