“I know what it is his interest to think.”
“You daren’t say that if he were here, you coward.”
“And I don’t care a farthing what he thinks.”
“Ha, ha, ha!”
“But if it had been fifty times over, what it never was, a marriage, your own conduct, long ago, would have dissolved it.”
“And you allow you have married that woman?”
“I shan’t talk to you about it; how I shall act, or may act, or have acted is my own affair, and rely upon it I’ll do nothing on the assumption that I ever was married to you.”
Up stood the tall woman, with hands extended toward him, wide open, with a slightly groping motion as if opening a curtain; not a word did she say, but her sightless eyes, which stared full at him, were quivering with that nervous tremor which is so unpleasant to see.
She drew breath two or three times at intervals, long and deep, almost a sob, and then without speaking or moving more she sat down, looking awfully white and wicked.
For a time the old soldier had lost the thread of her discourse. Charles heard a step not very far off. He thought his unreasonable Bertha was about to have a fit, and opening the door he called lustily to Mildred.