"But not—forgive me, my dear, for saying it—not the less unseemly."
"Why do you grumble at me, then?"
"I do not grumble," he answered in a kind tone. "Your interests are mine, Sibylla, and mine are yours. I only tell you the fact—and a fact it is—that our income will not stand these heavy calls upon it. Were I to show you how much you have spent in dress since we were married—what with Paris, London, and Heartburg—the sum total would frighten you."
"You should not keep the sum total," resentfully spoke Sibylla. "Why do you add it up?"
"I must keep my accounts correctly. My uncle taught me that."
"I am sure he did not teach you to grumble at me," she rejoined. "I look upon Verner's Pride as mine, more than yours; if it had not been for the death of my husband, you would never have had it."
Inexpressibly vexed—vexed beyond the power to answer, for he would not trust himself to answer—Lionel prepared to quit the room. He began to wish he had not had Verner's Pride, if this was to be its domestic peace. Sibylla petulantly threw the French book from her lap upon the table, and it fell down with its page open.
Lionel's eyes caught its title, and a flush, not less deep than the preceding flush, darkened his brow. He laid his open palm upon the page with an involuntary movement, as if he would guard it from the eyes of his wife. That she should be reading that notorious work!
"Where did you get this?" he cried. "It is not a fit book for you."
"There's nothing-the matter with the book as far as I have gone."