disgrace upon us by introducing a stranger here and mortifying and
humbling me in front of him. If the Dosses are good enough for me,
they are good enough for my husband."

"My dear wife, they are not good enough for you. There is the whole
truth. Why are you so altered? Why will you not listen to me and take
my advice as you used to do? Have you forgotten how happy we once
were with each other?"

There was a little break in his voice, but Bella was too incensed to
heed it.

"You mean that you did not abuse me when you had it entirely your own
way! Wonderful! Perhaps you did not know that you bored me to death
the whole time. And now you have got it at last. I'm tired of your
cheap gentility and Brummagem pretensions; sick to death of hearing
that nothing I have been used to is "proper." If my world is a second
rate one, show me a better. Why don't you introduce me to your own,
if it is so vastly superior? Have you done it? Not you! You bury me
in this poky little hole and deliberately insult the only friends I
have who take the trouble to come and look me up."

Chetwynd passed his hand over his brow dreamily. The whole thing was
such a shock to him, he could hardly realise it.

"I hope you are saying much more than you mean," he said at last.
"God knows if you have been dull I never suspected it."

"Because I have not grumbled--because I smiled instead of yawning,
and laughed when I felt like crying, you never suspected it! Did you