"But she may love him, you mean?" Sir Hervey said, interpreting her tone rather than her words.
"Yes, or hate him," she answered. "It is the one or the other."
"Since he kissed her?"
"Yes, I think so," and then on a sudden Sophia faltered. She felt the blood begin to rise to her cheeks in one of those blushes, the most trying of all, that commence uncertainly, mount slowly, but persist, and at length deepen into pain. She remembered that the man walking beside her, talking of these others' love affairs, had never kissed her! He must think, he could not but think, of their own case. He might even fancy that she meant her words for a hint.
He saw her distress, understood it, and took pity on her. But the abruptness with which he changed the conversation, and by-and-by withdrew, persuaded her that he had read her thoughts, and long after he had left her, her face burned.
The whole matter, Tom's misbehaviour and the rest, had upset her; she told herself that this was what ailed her and made her restless. Nor was she quick to regain her balance. She found the house, new as all things in it were to her, dull and over-quiet; she found Lady Betty, once so lively, no company; she found Tom snappish and ill-tempered. And she blamed Tom for all; or told herself that town and the opera and the masquerade had spoiled her for a country life. She did not lay the blame elsewhere. Even to herself she did not admit that Sir Hervey, polite and considerate as he was, to the point of leaving her much to herself, would have pleased her better had he left her less. But she did think--and with soreness--that he would have been wiser had he given her more frequent opportunities of learning to be at ease with him.
She did not go further than this even in her thoughts until three days after Tom's escapade. Then, feeling dull herself, she came on Tom moping on the terrace, and undertook to rally him on his humour. "If you would really be in her good graces again, 'tis not the way to do it, Tom; I can tell you that," she said. "Laugh and talk, and she'll wish you. Pluck up a spirit, and 'twill win more on her than a million sighs."
"What's the good?" he muttered sourly.
"Well, at any rate, you do no good by moping."
Tom sat silent awhile, his head buried between his hands, his elbows resting on the balustrade. "I don't see that anything's any good," he muttered at last. "We're both in one case, I think. You know your own business, I suppose. You know, I take it, what you were doing when you married in such a hurry; but I'm d----d," with sudden violence, "if I understand it. Three weeks married, and put on one side for another!"