"Ay." Temper rising.
"One failed in one's duty to dear Mrs. Lee, because of one's jealous care of one's dear child and wife."
"Fiddlesticks! I know some of your goings-on. Poor Martha!"
"Poor Martha? One fails to understand. If Martha had been treated as poor Rachel's husband treated her; if she had suffered cruelty—adultery—vileness—sin; if one were hounding her to her grave as he hounded poor Rachel; if one had killed her and broken her heart, and then sneered that one could not pay to bury her—"
"The brute," cried Aunt Jael, sidetracked.
His crude attempt to transfer her rising wrath on to the head of another had succeeded. He knew the quality of the memories he evoked.
"The brute; the cruel, fleshly scoundrel!"
"Hush, Aunt," whispered Aunt Martha, "after all it is the Child's father."
I coloured violently, and my heart beat fast. The unfamiliar phrase "Rachel's husband" had conveyed nothing. Now I was throbbing with excitement, curiosity and shame.
"Well, let her know the truth."