"What do you mean? What does she mean?" continued Lady Sarah, appealing to the other two sisters, for Adela had not deemed it necessary to lower her voice. They did not answer. Grace took up an album, her face wearing a sad look of pain; Frances walked into the other drawing-room.
"I insist upon knowing what you mean, in saying that Mr. Grubb is your husband to your cost," cried Lady Sarah, returning to the charge. She was so much older than Adela—looking, in fact, old enough to be her mother, for India's sun and the loss of her children had greatly aged her—that she took her to task at will. Lady Sarah, like her mother, had always displayed somewhat of a propensity for setting the world to rights.
"It is to my cost," spoke Adela, defiantly. "That I should be his wife, obliged to stand as such before the world, a man of his name, a tradesman!" And the emphatic scorn, the stress of aversion laid on the "his," no pen could adequately express. "I never hear myself announced, 'Lady Adela Grubb,' but I shiver; I never see it in the Morning Post, amongst the lists at an entertainment, or perhaps at Court, but I fling the paper from me. As I should like to fling him."
"Bless my heart and mind, what's in a name?" demanded Lady Sarah, having listened as one astounded.
"Grubb! Grubb!" hissed Adela, from between her dainty lips. "There is a great deal in that name, at any rate, Sarah. I hate it. It is to me as a nightmare. And I hate him for forcing me to bear it."
"Forcing you to bear it! Why, you are his wife."
"I am—to my shame. But he had no right to make me his wife: to ask me to be his wife. Why could he not have fixed upon any one else? Grace, there, for instance. She would not have minded the name or the trade. She'd have got used to it—and to him."
Lady Sarah Hope nodded her head four or five times in succession. "A pretty frame of mind you are cherishing, Adela! Leave off such evil speaking—and thinking. Your husband is a true gentleman, a man that the world may be proud of; he can hold his own as such anywhere. As to the house in Leadenhall Street, it is of world-wide fame—the idea of your calling him a 'tradesman!'—Let me speak! Where can you find a man with so noble a presence, so refined and sweet a countenance? And I feel sure that he is as good and true and generous in himself as he is distinguished in reputation and person."
"All the same, I scorn him. I hate him for having chosen me. And it is the pleasure of my life to let him see that I do," concluded Adela, in sheer defiance, as she tossed her pretty head.
"Cease, Adela, cease!" interposed Grace, coming forward, her hands lifted imploringly. "You little know the wickedness of what you are saying; or the evil you may be laying up for yourself in the days to come. This is not your true nature; you are only forcing it upon yourself to gratify a resentment you have persistently taken up. How often have I prayed to you to be your own true self!