“Yes, that is Felicity all over! But let me finish.
“‘She is as gay as a lark’ (gay as a lark, when her mother died three months ago!)”
“Died of drink!” amended he, with that sense of justice which is always more inherent in man than woman.
“‘Gay as a lark’ (dear feeling little thing!), ‘and I thought, and think—indeed, it is one of my chief motives for making the proposal’ (ahem!), ‘that the presence of a bright young creature would bring a great accession of cheerfulness into both your lives.’”
“Are we so uncheerful?” asked the man, in a tone whose vexation was coloured with misgiving.
“A childless home is never very merry,” replied his wife, shortly.
Tancred’s eyes dropped to the object upon which his hand was already resting, the head of the wire-haired fox-terrier, whom his mistress spoilt most, but who liked his master best. The husband had long ceased to wince outwardly, though never inwardly, when one of the two great “raws” of his life was touched. He had married Camilla, and he had not given her the children for whom she hungered in that passionate greed, only increased by years and improbabilities, with which some women crave for offspring. And now they had been married for fifteen winters, and Camilla was fifty years old.
“You see that I was right; there is no allusion to her personal appearance.”
“No, it was my stupid mistake.”
“Though she is ‘as gay as a lark,’”—harking back rather grimly to the phrase that had displeased her—“she may also be as ugly as sin.”