“I’ve seen Mrs. Murray a dozen times in the last year.”
“Oh, you needn’t tell me that; I know it. She’s a lady, isn’t she?”
Basil stared coolly at his wife; though asking himself why that name had occurred to her, it never dawned on him that she could suspect how violent was his passion. But he meant to ignore the charge.
“My work takes me away from you,” he said. “Think how bored you’d be if I were always here.”
“A precious lot of good your work does,” she cried scornfully. “You can’t earn enough money to keep us out of debt.”
“We are in debt, but we share that very respectable condition with half the nobility and gentry in the kingdom.”
“All the neighbours know that we’ve got bills with the tradesmen.”
Basil flushed and tightened his lips.
“I’m sorry that you shouldn’t have made so good a bargain as you expected when you married me,” he replied acidly.
“I wonder what you do succeed in. Your book was very successful, wasn’t it? You thought you were going to set the Thames on fire, and it fell flat, flat, flat!”