wait?'

Now she crushed the newspaper up with a passionate movement, and threw
it from her. She raised her head, showing cheeks blazing with anger, and
dark, sullen, unflinching eyes.

'I did wyte then!' she cried 'I wyted till near eight before I got
your old telegraph! I s'pose that's what you call the manners of a
"gentleman", to keep your wife mewed up here, while you go gallivantin'
off with your fine friends?'

Whenever Esther was angry, which was often, she taunted Willoughby with
being 'a gentleman', although this was the precise point about him which
at other times found most favour in her eyes. But tonight she was
envenomed by the idea he had been enjoying himself without her, stung
by fear lest he should have been in company with some other woman.

Willoughby, hearing the taunt, resigned himself to the inevitable.
Nothing that he could do might now avert the breaking storm; all his
words would only be twisted into fresh griefs. But sad experience had
taught him that to take refuge in silence was more fatal still. When
Esther was in such a mood as this it was best to supply the fire with
fuel, that, through the very violence of the conflagration, it might
the sooner burn itself out.

So he said what soothing things he could, and Esther caught them up,
disfigured them, and flung them back at him with scorn. She reproached
him with no longer caring for her; she vituperated the conduct of his
family in never taking the smallest notice of her marriage; and she
detailed the insolence of the landlady who had told her that morning she