“I don’t hold you,” he grumbled.
It was a long time since she had seen him like this; usually he was assertive and complacent. How slight a thing it took to disturb him! His complacency was only a façade, a painted hoarding propped up by struts,—theatrical, like everything else about him. But she really bothered very little with him, now that she had found him out.
“Oh, yes, Richard,” she said, to pacify him and to be done with the argument.
“But I say no,” he cried, hitting his fist on the arm of his chair. “You’re for ever looking out of the window, and sometimes when I speak to you, you answer beside the point. I married you to get a wife, not a woman languishing like a captive in my house.”
She laughed at that, quite amusedly, and he felt he had been foolish. Still he would not abandon his point.
“That fellow would only have to beckon ...” he grumbled.
“Lovel again?” asked Clare.
“You enjoy saying his name.”
“I do not,” said Clare quietly.
“No,” he said, staring at her, “perhaps you do not.”