"Gertrude has no suspicion of any other Cain except the naughty boy who killed his brother."
When the company had gone, he turned to her and said angrily:
"Why need you disgrace me by exposing your ignorance any more than is necessary? Why couldn't you answer that you had not read the books, without adding that you never heard of them? I shall be laughed at for having married a fool."
"I told you I was ignorant; and you promised to teach me," she began, her lip quivering.
"What time have I to hear a-b, ab," he asked with a sneer.
Another time she was on her way to the parlor after tea, when she heard a great shout of laughter. She ran back to her room in an agony of grief and mortification when she overheard her husband reading aloud for the edification of a coarse companion, one of the letters she had written him soon after their engagement. Even in her own room she could hear a fresh burst of merriment when they stumbled upon a word spelled as it could be found in the dictionary.
All this time the affairs in her house were growing more and more confused. One servant after another was engaged and dismissed by the master for some trifling offence, until no decent one would come to them. It had become a habit of Paul's to take his dinners and often his breakfasts at a restaurant, without stopping to inquire where his wife procured her food.
At last he insisted that the usage of society required they should give a party in return for all their invitations, and their cards were accordingly sent out.
Poor, ignorant, unhappy Gertrude shrank with actual pain from the responsibilities of the occasion; and when she timidly asked her husband what she should do, he answered sharply:
"I can tell better what you will do. You'll act like a fool as you always have done," in company. But when she began to cry, he softened a little and explained: