The man stood in stupid innocence. Provoked to speak more plainly, the lady exclaimed, “Unfeeling, cruel, barbarous man!—Have not you this whole day been trying your utmost skill to torment me to death? and, proud of your success, now you come to enjoy your triumph.”
“Success!—triumph!”
“Yes, triumph!—I see it in your eyes—it is in vain to deny it. All this I owe to your friend Mr. Granby. Why he should be my enemy!—I who never injured him, or any body living, in thought, word, or deed—why he should be my enemy!”—
“Enemy!—My love, this is the strangest fancy! Why should you imagine that he is your enemy?”
“He is my enemy—nobody shall ever convince me of the contrary; he has wounded me in the tenderest point, and in the basest manner: has not he done his utmost, in the most artful, insidious way,—even before my face,—to persuade you that you were a thousand times happier when you were a bachelor than you are now—than you ever have been since you married me?”
“Oh, my dear Griselda, you totally misunderstand him: such a thought never entered his mind.”
“Pardon me, I know him better than you do.”
“But I have known him ever since I was a child.”
“That is the very reason you cannot judge of him as well as I can: how could you judge of character when you were a child?”
“But now that I am a man—”