angrily:

"Here! Stop! I want to give Bingo a chocolate drop!"

They didn't stop. In the street on the way to Bingo's new home, Eleanor,
holding her little dog in her arms, was blind with tears, but Maurice
effervesced into extravagant ridicule. His opinion of Mrs. Newbolt, her
parlor, her ponderosity, and her missing g's, exhausted his vocabulary
of opprobrious adjectives; but Eleanor was silent, just putting up a
furtive handkerchief to wipe her eyes. It was dark, and he drew her hand
through his arm and patted it.

"Don't worry, Star. Uncle Henry is white! She can write to him all she
wants to! I'm betting that we'll get an invitation to come right up to
Green Hill."

She said nothing, but he knew she was trembling. As they entered Mrs.
O'Brien's alley, they paused where it was dark enough, halfway between
gaslights, for a man to put his arm around his wife's waist and kiss
her. (Bingo growled.)

"Eleanor! I've a great mind to go back to that hell-cat, and tell her
what I think of her!"

"No. Very likely she's right. I--I have injured you. Oh, Maurice, if I
_have_--"

"You'd have injured me a damn sight more if you hadn't married me!" he
said.

But for the moment her certainty that her marriage was a glorious and
perfect thing, collapsed; her voice was a broken whisper:

"If I've spoiled your life--she says I have;--I'll ... kill myself,
Maurice." She spoke with a sort of heavy calmness, that made a small,
cold thrill run down his back; he burst into passionate protest:

"All I am, or ever can be, will be because you love me! Darling, when
you say things like--like what you said, I feel as if you didn't love
me--"

Of course the reproach tautened her courage; "I do! I do! But--"

"Then never say such a wicked, cruel thing again!"

It was when Bingo had been left with Mrs. O'Brien that, on their way
back to the hotel, Maurice, in a burst of enthusiasm, invited his third
bad moment: "I am going to have a rattling old dinner party to celebrate
your escape from the hag! How about Saturday night?"

She protested that he was awfully extravagant; but she cheered up. After
all, what difference did it make what a person like Auntie thought! "But
who will you ask?" she said. "I suppose you don't know any men here? And
I don't, either."

He admitted that he had only two or three acquaintances in Mercer--"but
I have a lot in Philadelphia. You shan't live on a desert island,
Nelly!"

"Ah, but I'd like to--