am really vexed about anything,
you know, I always want to tell you about it."

"I should feel it a great deal harder if you _didn't_ want to tell me
about it," says he. He has come nearer to her and has pressed her into a
chair--a dilapidated affair that if ever it _had_ a best day has
forgotten it by now--and yet for all that is full of comfort. "I am only
sorry"--moving away again and leaning against the chimney piece--"that
you should be so foolish as to let my father's absurd prejudices annoy
you at this time of day."

"He will always have it in his power to annoy me," says she quickly.
"That perhaps," with a little burst of feeling, "is why I can't forgive
him. If I could forget, or grow indifferent to it all, I should not have
this _hurt_ feeling in my heart. But he is your father, and though he is
the most unjust, the cruellest man on earth, I still hate to think he
should regard me as he does."

"There is one thing, however, you do forget," says Mr. Monkton gravely.
"I don't want to apologize for him, but I would remind you that he has
never seen you."

"That's only an aggravation of his offence," her color heightening; "the
very fact that he should condemn me unseen, unheard, adds to the wrong
he has done me instead of taking from it." She rises abruptly and begins
to pace up and down the room, the hot Irish blood in her veins afire.
"No"--with a little impatient gesture of her small hand--"I _can't_ sit
still. Every pulse seems throbbing. He has opened up all the old wounds,
and----" She pauses and then turns upon her husband two lovely flashing
eyes. "Why, _why_ should he suppose that I am vulgar, lowly born, unfit
to be your wife?"

"My darling girl, what can it matter what he thinks? A ridiculous
headstrong old man in one scale, and----"

"But it does matter. I want to _convince_ him that I am not--not--what
he believes me to be."

"Then come over to England and see him."

"No--never! I shall never go to England. I shall stay in Ireland always.
My own land; the land whose people he detests because he knows nothing
about them. It was one of his chief objections to your marriage with me,
that I was an Irish girl!"

She stops short, as though her wrath and indignation and contempt is too
much for her.

"Barbara," says Monkton, very gently, but with a certain reproach, "do
you know you almost make me think that you regret our marriage."

"No, I don't," quickly. "If I talked for ever I shouldn't b