Her husband was at hand—that is to say, under the same roof, and at that moment in the room in which the blind woman was now sitting, bleeding from head and hand, and smiling as she talked, with the false light of a malignant irony.
“So, husband and wife are met again! And what have you to say after so long a time?”
“I’ve nothing to say. Let my deeds speak. I’ve given you year by year fully half my income.”
She laughed scornfully, and exclaimed merely—
“Magnificent man!”
“Miserable pittance it is, but the more miserable, the harder the sacrifice for me. I don’t say I have been able to do much; but I have done more than my means warrant, and I don’t understand what you propose to yourself by laying yourself out to torment and embarrass me. What the devil do you follow me about for? Do you think I’m fool enough to be bullied?”
“A fine question from Charles Vairfield of Wyvern to his wife!” she observed with a pallid simper.
“Wife and husband are terms very easily pronounced,” said he.
“And relations very easily made,” she rejoined.
He was leaning with his shoulder against the high mantelpiece, and looking upon her with a countenance in which you might have seen disdain and fear mingling with something of compunction.