"He is rough," she said, with hesitation in her voice; "he uses language new to me. But if you can see no strangeness in his manner...." Her voice died away, her hopes had vanished; she had a horrible and undefinable dread—she had seen a wildness in his eyes, which in a less degree she had seen when she had first known him; but our own convictions, unsupported by any facts, are inconclusive to other people—and Dr. Jones, seeing in her a very lovely woman, but one evidently able to deceive, and who did not hesitate to say she had no liberty, when he had seen her alone and out, was steeled against her.
He laid down the law with all the authority of a man who is fully aware of having right on his side.
"Madam, if you have any one tangible grievance—if your husband ever struck you, or ill-treated you in any way—then I should see my way to interfering in your behalf; the law protects you in such a case."
"Yes," Margaret answered, bitterly, "you will interfere, and the law will protect (?) me when I am injured; there is no help for me till the necessity for help has passed away."
She bowed and left him—knowing that her words were useless, and went to try and comfort herself, and try and bear her fate without a murmur. Had she not sinned, and against all her convictions, with her eyes open, and fearing this very thing!
"What a very illogical mind she has," said Dr. Jones, as he stalked downstairs, comfortably satisfied that he had been firm, and that her grace, the pathos of her voice, and her great beauty, had alike been disregarded. Justice, without doubt, was on his side—he thought.
But as he stepped on the last step something made him sensible that there might be a little truth in what she said. Though she had told him a deliberate untruth, all might not be false.
He changed his mind about going home at once, and he went to see Mr. Drayton instead. He found him very quiet, rather depressed, without a trace of excitement in his manner.
Nothing during the interview transpired to give the slightest colour to the wife's dread; and the doctor left, perfectly convinced in his own mind that Mrs. Drayton was quite in the wrong, in more ways than one.
Just as he reached the front door and was full of his own good sense, he heard a sound that startled him, a loud soul-less meaningless laugh, and as the front door shut upon him, pulled by his own hand, a quick, sharp misgiving crossed his mind, and he wished he had seen the man-servant. He had not thought it necessary. But his own convictions soon banished that sudden thought, and the result of his visit was to confirm his views and to give rise to many moral reflections on the way in which glaring faults may be marked by unusual personal advantages.