her, pale with fury; but no more words.

No: an ominous silence succeeded this lamentable answer, like the
silence that follows a thunder-clap.

Griffith stood still awhile, benumbed as it were by the cruel stroke;
then cast one speaking look of anguish and reproach upon her, drew
himself haughtily up, and stalked away like a wounded lion.

Well said the ancients that anger is a short madness. When we reflect in
cold blood on the things we have said in hot, how impossible they seem!
how out of character with our real selves! And this is one of the
recognized symptoms of mania.

There were few persons could compare with Mrs. Gaunt in native
magnanimity; yet how ungenerous a stab had she given.

And had he gone on, she would have gone on; but when he turned silent at
her bitter thrust, and stalked away from her, she came to herself almost
directly.

She thought, "Good God! what have I said to him?"

And the flush of shame came to her cheek, and her eyes filled with
tears.

He saw them not; he had gone away, wounded to the heart.

You see it was true. The house was hers; tied up as tight as wax. The
very money (his own money) that had been spent on the place, had become
hers by being expended on real property; he could not reclaim it; he was
her lodger, a dependent on her bounty.

During all the years they had lived together she had never once assumed
the proprietor. On the contrary, she put him forward as the Squire, and
slipped quietly into the background. _Bene latuit._ But, lo! let a hand
be put out to offend her saintly favorite, and that moment she could
waken her husband from his dream, and put him down into his true legal
position with a word. The matrimonial throne for him till he resisted
her priest; and then, a stool at her feet, and his.

He was enraged as well as hurt; but being a true lover, his fury was
levelled, not at the woman who had hurt him, but at the man who stood
out of sight and set her on.

By this time the reader knows his good qualities, and his defects;
superior to his wife in one or two things, he was by no means so
thorough a gentleman as she was a lady. He had begun to make a party
with his own servants against the common enemy; and, in his wrath, he
now took another step, or rather a stride, in the same direction. As he
hurried away to the public-house, white with ire, he met his gamekeeper
coming in with a bucketful of fish fresh caught. "What have ye got
there?" said Griffi