He must explain sometime, and so at last he continued. “You must have seen how opposed Katy is to complying with my wishes, setting them at naught, when she knows how much pleasure she would give me by yielding as she used to do.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Helen replied, “unless it is her aversion to going out, as that, I think, is the only point where her obedience has not been absolute.”
Wilford did not like the words obedience and absolute; that is, he did not like the sound. Their definition suited him, but Helen’s enunciation was at fault, and he answered quickly, “I do not require absolute obedience from Katy. I never did; but in this matter to which you refer, I think she might consult my wishes as well as her own. There is no reason for her secluding herself in the nursery as she does. Do you think there is?”
He put the question direct, and Helen answered it.
“I do not believe Katy means to displease you, but she has conceived a strong aversion for festive scenes, and besides, baby is not healthy, you know, and like all young mothers, she may be over-anxious, while I fancy she has not the fullest confidence in the nurse, and this may account for her unwillingness to leave the child with her.”
“Kirby was all that was desirable,” Wilford replied. “His mother had taken her from a genteel, respectable house in Bond street, and he paid her an enormous price, consequently she must be right;” and then came the story that his mother had decided that neither Katy nor baby would improve so long as they remained together; that for both a separation was desirable; that she had recommended sending the child into the country, where it would be better cared for than it could be at home, with Katy constantly undoing all Mrs. Kirby had done, waking it from sleep whenever the fancy took her, and in short, treating it much as she probably did her doll when she was a little girl. With the child away, there would be nothing to prevent Katy’s going out again and getting back her good looks, which were somewhat impaired.
“Why, she looks older than you do,” Wilford said, thinking thus to conciliate Helen, who quietly replied,
“There is not two years difference between us, and I have always been well, and kept regular hours until I came here.”
Wilford’s compliment had failed, and more annoyed than before, he asked, not what Helen thought of the arrangement, but if she would influence Katy to act and think rationally upon it; “at least, you will not make it worse,” he said, and this time there was something deferential and pleading in his manner.
Helen knew the matter was fixed,—that neither Katy’s tears nor entreaties would avail to revoke the decision, and so, though her whole soul rose in indignation against a man who would deliberately send his nursing baby from his roof because it was in his way, and was robbing his bride’s cheek of its girlish bloom, she answered composedly,