“Do you think I will live in this house, Paley Glasswood?” said she, with her lips compressed and her eyes snapping with indignation.
“Why, I hope so,” I replied, more astonished than she had been at any time during the visit to the new house.
“You are mistaken, Paley Glasswood. I am your wife, but not your slave; I am not to be dragged from my home when and where you please. You ought to have told me what you intended to do in the beginning.”
“I know it now; and I confess that I was wrong,” I replied, with due humility, and, I may add, with perfect sincerity. “I hope you will forgive me, this time Lilian, and I will never be guilty of such an offence again.”
“I should hope not. But here we are! What’s to be done with this house and furniture?”
“Why, my dear, won’t you go to housekeeping with me?”
“Certainly not, in this house,” she answered, with a flourish.
This announcement was very startling to me. It was appalling to think that I had expended fifteen hundred in preparing a cage which the bird refused to occupy. Intensely as I loved, adored Lilian, I could not help seeing that she was developing a trait of character which I did not like. But I was a politic man, and seeing how useless it was to attempt to argue the matter while she was in her present frame of mind, I had to keep still. We left the house and walked home. For the first time since we were married she declined to take my arm, and I began to be very miserable. Somehow it seemed to me that the meeker I was, and the more I deprecated her wrath, the greater became her objection to the house.
“What shall I say to dear ma?” demanded Lilian, after she had thrown off her things.
“My dear, you need not say a word to her. I will do all this unpleasant business myself,” I replied. “You can lay all the blame upon me. I will tell her that we are going to our new house to-morrow.”
“You needn’t tell her any such thing, for I am not.”
Before we had proceeded any farther with the discussion Mrs. Oliphant entered the room. The battle was imminent.
I DID not feel at all at ease when Mrs. Oliphant entered the room. I was entirely willing to be conquered and trodden under the little feet of the fair Lilian, but I was not so ready to be trampled upon by the unromantic feet of “dear ma.” I was conscious that my pretty wife was getting the weather-gage of me—that she had already got it, in fact. I was not disposed to complain of this, but I intended, if possible, to out-manœuvre Mrs. Oliphant. I regarded Lilian as “my family,” and I wished to have her “set off” from my mother-in-law.