“By Jove!” said Beauchamp, when left to himself, “I begin to suspect I have been a great fool, after all!”
But reflection and a cigar soothed him a little; half an hour later he followed his wife to her boudoir. She was writing busily.
“Eugenia,” he began, “I am sorry for my rudeness just now, but you are very unreasonable. Why can’t you write to your people, and ask them to come on the Friday? We return then. Any one but you would understand my reasons for wishing to go to Marshlands.”
“I do understand them, rather too well,” replied his wife, coldly. “As for asking my people to come on Friday, it is out of the question. My brother-in-law cannot be away on Sunday; and besides, I cannot ask my father and Sydney—neither of them strong—to come so long a journey for only two days.”
“Why for only two days?”
“Because on Monday all your friends are coming, and you do not wish mine to be here at the same time.”
“I never said anything of the kind,” exclaimed Beauchamp, angrily, aware nevertheless that he had thought something very much of the kind. It was not that he was ashamed of Mr Laurence or Sydney; he liked them both very well; but there had been a good deal of “chaff” about his Wareborough marriage, and he had imagined more. He could ill bear chaff, and his constitutional and avowed arrogance laid him peculiarly open to it in certain directions. How he had sneered and made fun of other men in the old days for being “caught” by a pretty face or a pair of bright eyes! He was not ashamed of his marriage—he was proud of his wife in herself—but on the whole, he preferred that his old friends, on their first visit, should not find the house full of his Wareborough relations-in-law. But he had not imagined that Eugenia suspected this.
“I never said anything of the kind,” he repeated, working himself into a rage. “But I warn you, Eugenia, if you don’t take care what you are about, you will drive me into thinking, and saying too, many things I never wish to think or say.”
She got up from her seat, and stood facing him.
“I know what you mean,” she said, huskily, a white despair creeping over her face. “You mean that you regret your marriage. Why did you do it at all then?—tell me. Why did you make me think you everything great and noble, to open my eyes now like this? Why did you not leave me where I was, happy and loved, instead of making me care for you? Why did you ask me to be your wife?”