"Don't be too sure of that, Helen," returned Wingfold. "There are very decent husbands as husbands go, who are yet unjust, exacting, selfish. The most devoted of wives are sometimes afraid of the men they yet consider the very models of husbands. It is a brutal shame that a woman should feel afraid, or even uneasy, instead of safe, beside her husband."
"You are always on the side of the women, Thomas," said his wife; "and I love you for it somehow—I can't tell why."
"You make a mistake to begin with, my dear: you don't love me because I am on the side of the women, but because I am on the side of the wronged. If the man happened to be the injured party, and I took the side of the woman, you would be down on me like an avalanche."
"I dare say. But there is something more in it. I don't think I am altogether mistaken. You don't talk like most men. They have such an ugly way of asserting superiority, and sneering at women! That you never do, and as a woman I am grateful for it."
The same afternoon Dorothy Drake paid a visit to Mrs. Faber, and was hardly seated before the feeling that something was wrong arose in her. Plainly Juliet was suffering—from some cause she wished to conceal. Several times she seemed to turn faint, hurriedly fanned herself, and drew a deep breath. Once she rose hastily and went to the window, as if struggling with some oppression, and returned looking very pale.
Dorothy was frightened.
"What is the matter, dear?" she said.
"Nothing," answered Juliet, trying to smile. "Perhaps I took a little cold last night," she added with a shiver.
"Have you told your husband?" asked Dorothy.
"I haven't seen him since Saturday," she answered quietly, but a pallor almost deathly overspread her face.