“I won’t stand it,” she said at last with a gentle deliberation.
She spoke so softly that he doubted his hearing. “What?” he asked sharply.
“I won’t stand it,” she repeated. “No.”
“But—what can you do?”
“I don’t know,” she said, after a moment of grave consideration.
For some moments his mind hunted among possibilities.
“It’s me that’s standing it,” he said. He came closely up to her. He seemed on the verge of rhetoric. He pressed his thin white lips together. “Standing it! when we might be so happy,” he snapped, and shrugged his shoulders and turned with an expression of mournful resolution towards the house again. She followed slowly.
He felt that he had done all that a patient and reasonable husband could do. Now—things must take their course.
§5
The imprisonment of Lady Harman at Black Strand lasted just one day short of a fortnight.