After one of these glances she said, in a tone which was not exactly hostile, but had a note of suspicion:
‘I’d give something to know why he’s going to marry Clara Hewett.’
‘Not the first time you’ve made that remark,’ returned Joseph, without looking up from his paper.
‘I suppose I can speak?’
‘Oh, yes. But I’d try to do so in a more ladylike way.’
Clem flashed at him a gleam of hatred. He had become fond lately of drawing attention to her defects of breeding. Clem certainly did not keep up with his own progress in the matter of external refinement; his comments had given her a sense of inferiority, which irritated her solely as meaning that she was not his equal in craft. She let a minute or two pass, then returned to the subject.
‘There’s something at the bottom of it; I know that. Of course you know more about it than you pretend.’
Joseph leaned back in his chair and regarded her with a smile of the loftiest scorn.
‘It never occurs to you to explain it in the simplest way, of course. If ever you hear of a marriage, the first thing you ask yourself is: What has he or she to gain by it? Natural enough—in you. Now do you really suppose that all marriages come about in the way that yours did—on your side, I mean?’
Clem was far too dull-witted to be capable of quick retort. She merely replied: