"It’s a pity Maggie went off like that," she said quietly. "You might have fixed everything up immediately."
Then it was that he turned on her, glowering angrily.
"Why on earth did you go talking about it, without telling me first?" he demanded, furious.
"But it was understood, dear----" She smiled, affecting not to perceive his temper, and thereby aggravating it.
"Nothing of the kind! Nothing of the kind!"
"Maggie was there. I just happened to mention it." Hilda was still quite placid.
"You went down on purpose to tell her, so you needn’t deny it. Do you take me for a fool?"
"Of course I don’t take you for a fool, dear. I assure you I hadn’t the slightest idea you’d be annoyed."
"Yes, you had. I could see it on your face when I came in. Don’t try to stuff me up. You go blundering into a thing, without the least notion--without the least notion! I’ve told you before, and I tell you again--I won’t have you interfering in my business affairs. You know nothing of business. You’ll make my life impossible. All you women are the same. You will poke your noses in. There’ll have to be a clear understanding between you and me on one or two points, before we go much further."
"But you told me I could mention it to her."
"I didn’t say you could go and plunge right into it at once. These things have to be thought out. Houses aren’t bought like that. A house isn’t a pound of tea, and it isn’t a hat."
"No, you aren’t. And you know jolly well you aren’t. Your scheme was simply to tie my hands."
She knew the truth of this, and her smile became queer. Nevertheless the amiable calm which she maintained astonished even herself. She was not happy, but certainly she was not unhappy. She had got, or she was going to get, what she wanted; and here was the only fact important to her; the means by which she had got it, or was going to get it, were negligible now. It cost her very little to be magnanimous. She wondered at Edwin. Was this furious brute the timid, worshipping boy who had so marvellously kissed her a dozen years earlier--before she had fallen into the hands of a scoundrel? Were these scenes what the exquisite romance of marriage had come to? ... Well, and if it was so, what then? If she was not happy she was elated, and she was philosophic, and she had the terrific sense of realities of some of her sex. She was out of the Benbow house; she breathed free, she had triumphed, and she had her man to herself. He might be a brute--the Five Towns (she had noticed as a returned exile) were full of brutes whose passions surged and boiled beneath the phlegmatic surface--but he existed, and their love existed. And a peep into the depth of the cauldron was exciting.... The injustice or the justice of his behaviour did not make a live question.