"Gad! I should hope not! One of the biggest positions in England!" he exclaimed, in a tone of scornful irritation. With these words he rose and left the room.
Bettina's pride was deeply wounded. It had been that new assertion of the control of duty which had led her to say these things to her husband. She had conquered much in herself before speaking, and she felt that she had a right to resent the almost brutal insensibility with which he had received her words.
As she turned from the breakfast-room and mounted to her own apartments she felt conscious of a new humiliation in her life. Up to this time she had believed that Lord Hurdly would have been incapable of such speech as he had used to her that morning. She had done a good deal--more than was required of her, she told herself--in speaking to him as she had done after his words in the early part of their conversation, and now it seemed plain to her that she had fulfilled her whole duty toward him, and that if it had done no good, the fault was on his side and not on hers.
Once in her own rooms, she gave herself up to profoundly sorrowful thoughts. She was only twenty-two. How long the path of her future life looked, and whither would it lead? She had attained all that any woman could desire in the way of the world's bestowment. She did not underrate the value of this. On the contrary, it was as essential to one part of her nature as something far different in the way of human possibility was to another part. She did not lose her hold upon the actual because she was striving after the unattained. All this power and admiration was very important to her, though she felt the insufficiency of mere worldly prosperity. "Pleasure to have it, none; to lose it, pain," were words that very nearly fitted her state of mind. At the thought of going back to the obscurity she had come out of she shrank.
That talk with Lord Hurdly made a distinct epoch in their relations to each other. Neither ever referred to it, but it had left its impress upon both. To Bettina it gave the assurance that she had done all that could possibly be required of her, in her desire to come to a true and amicable understanding with her husband, and, after it, she had a greater sense of freedom. To Lord Hurdly it gave an insight into Bettina's nature which he had not had before. He found her to be possessed of a power of caustic speech which, he was bound to acknowledge, had made him feel uncomfortable. He felt also that he had not succeeded in asserting his supremacy over her quite so conclusively as he could have wished. He had, moreover, an uncomfortable warning, from the recollection of her words and looks, that it might be better for him to think twice in future before crossing swords with her. He was a man who hated opposition, and who was quite unused to dealing with it in his own house. He was still master, and his sovereignty no one had even questioned. As he desired to keep this so, he did not care to enter into any further discussion with Bettina. There were circumstances not beyond his conceiving which might cause him a greater loss of prestige than any already endured, and the thought of these made him careful to avoid coming again into close quarters with Bettina.