think anything more about it; but do bear this in mind,--that,
situated as we are, your influence with your father may be the making
or the marring of me." And so he left the room.

She sat for the next ten minutes thinking of it all. The words which
he had spoken were so horrible that she could not get them out of her
mind,--could not bring herself to look upon them as a trifle. The
darkness of his countenance still dwelt with her,--and that absence
of all tenderness, that coarse un-marital and yet marital roughness,
which should not at any rate have come to him so soon. The whole man
too was so different from what she had thought him to be. Before
their marriage no word as to money had ever reached her ears from
his lips. He had talked to her of books,--and especially of poetry.
Shakespeare and Moliere, Dante and Goethe, had been or had seemed
to be dear to him. And he had been full of fine ideas about women,
and about men in their intercourse with women. For his sake she had
separated herself from all her old friends. For his sake she had
hurried into a marriage altogether distasteful to her father. For
his sake she had closed her heart against that other lover. Trusting
altogether in him she had ventured to think that she had known what
was good for her better than all those who had been her counsellors,
and had given herself to him utterly. Now she was awake; her dream
was over, and the natural language of the man was still ringing in
her ears!

They met together at dinner and passed the evening without a further
allusion to the scene which had been acted. He sat with a magazine
in his hand, every now and then making some remark intended to be
pleasant but which grated on her ears as being fictitious. She would
answer him,--because it was her duty to do so, and because she would
not condescend to sulk; but she could not bring herself even to say
to herself that all should be with her as though that horrid word had
not been spoken. She sat over her work till ten, answering him when
he spoke in a voice which was also fictitious, and then took herself
off to her bed that she might weep alone. It would, she knew, be late
before he would come to her.

On the next morning there came a message to him as he was dressing.
Mr. Wharton wished to speak to him. Would he come down before
breakfast, or would he call on Mr. Wharton in Stone Buildings? He
sent down word that he would do the latter at an hour he fixed, and
the