“No, but you thought it.—Ah, if I say that, you will ask again if you mayn’t have your thoughts to yourself. There are moments when I don’t know how to deal with you, Clare.” He knew his own injustice, but his querulous jealousy pricked him on. “Any other woman would be content to sit by her own fireside this bitter day with the man she had married so short a time ago.”
“Four months,—getting on for half a year.”
“I see,—you have found the time long. If you entered a little more into my interests, instead of having your own thoughts to yourself so much, my dear, perhaps you would find it pass quicker, and it would be more companionable.”
Clare thought that he looked at her almost with hatred. She was herself too indifferent to be interested either one way or the other.
“I shall be glad when this accursed snow is melted and gone,” he added, “and you will perhaps be a little less restless.”
At that moment Mrs. Quince came in, looking perturbed.
“There is Olver Lovel downstairs, madam, asking to see you,—I didn’t know what to say,—he seems so bent upon it,—but he looks like a scarecrow, that he does, with his coat torn and his hat stove in, and bits of straw all over him as though he had spent the night sleeping in a barn.”
Clare rose.
“Where is he, Mrs. Quince?”