"Do you think, madam, that a journeyman printer's daughter would be in her place among dukes and duchesses at a fashionable assembly? 'Twas not for such a life I chose you."
Lucy, who always trembled at her husband's frown, though she never refrained from provoking his anger, replied with her accustomed argument of tears. George saw the slim shoulders shaken by suppressed sobs, flung his book aside in a rage, and began to pace the cottage parlour, whose narrow bounds he was not yet accustomed to. In mild weather the half-glass door stood ever open, and he could pass to the grass plot outside when his impatient mood was on; but with a November rain beating against the casement there was no escape, and he felt like a caged bear.
Finding her stifled sobs unregarded, Lucy began again, in the same complaining voice--
"I thought a gentleman's wife was fit company even for dukes and duchesses; and if it comes to fathers, I have less need to be ashamed of mine, though he starved and beat me, than Lady Kilrush has of hers, who was in jail for running away with a farmer's cash-box. 'Twas all in the evening paper when his lordship married her."
"Good God!" cried George, "are women by nature mean and petty? The first desire of a gentleman's wife, madam, should be to think and act like a lady, and to-day you do neither. I wish we had never seen Lady Kilrush, since an hour of her company has made you dissatisfied with a life for which I thought Heaven designed you. To sigh for balls and drums--you, who never danced a step in your life! And do you think when I left the army--the calling I loved--I meant to hang upon the skirts of fashion, stand in doorways, or elbow and shove in supper-rooms? I renounced all such idle pleasures when I left His Majesty's service and took up arms for Christ, whose soldier and servant I am."
Lucy, now entirely repentant, looked up at him with streaming eyes, shivering at his indignation, but admiring him.
"How handsome you are when you are angry!" she cried. "You are so good and noble, and I am so vile a sinner. 'Tis Satan tempting me. He makes me forget what a worm I am. He makes me proud and ungrateful--ungrateful to you, my dear, my honoured husband; ungrateful to God who gave me your love."