"No, but----"
She did not let him explain. "Now," she cried, with shrill triumph, "you see what a fool you are! And where you'd be if it were not for me. Did she say a word about being Lady Coke until she heard her name from me? Eh? Answer me that, did she?"
Very miserable, he glanced at Sophia. "Well, no, my dear, I don't think she did!" he admitted.
"So I thought!" madam cried. And then with a cruel gesture, "off with it, you baggage! Off with it!" she continued. "Do you think I don't know that the moment my back is turned you'll be gone, and a good cloak with you! No, off with it, my ragged madam, and thank your stars I don't send you to the stocks!"
But her husband plucked up spirit at that.
"No," he said firmly. "No, she shall keep the cloak till she can get a covering. For shame, wife, for shame," he continued with a smack of dignity. "Do you never think that a daughter of yours may some day stand in her shoes?"
"You fool, she has got none!" his wife snarled. "And you'll give her that cloak, at your peril."
"She shall keep it, till she gets a covering," he answered.
"Then she'll keep it somewhere else, not here!" the termagant answered in a fury. "Do you call yourself a parson and go trapesing the country with a slut like that! And your lawful wife left at home?"
Sophia, white with exhaustion, could scarcely keep her feet, but at that she plucked up spirit. "The cloak I shall keep, for it is your husband's," she said. "For yourself, ma'am, you will bitterly repent before the day is out that you have treated me in this way."