you; that's what I've done. Not a soul in the place
will come to the house because of you. Nobody could ever stand you but
me; and what have I got by it? Not a halfpenny! It was just a swindle,
the whole business."

"Be careful!" Beth flashed forth. "If you make such assertions you
must prove them. The day is past when a man might insult his wife with
impunity. I have already told you I won't stand it. It would neither
be good for you nor for me if I did."

"It _was_ a swindle," he bawled. "Where are the seven or eight hundred
a year I married you for?"

Beth looked at him a moment, then burst out laughing. "Dear Dan," she
said, offering him the cheque, "you shall have the thirty shillings
all to yourself. You deserve it for telling the truth for once. I
consider I have had the best of the bargain, though. Thirty shillings
is cheap for such valuable information."

"Oh, damn you!" said Dan, leaving the room and banging the door after
him.

Beth signed the cheque and left it lying on his writing-table. She
never saw it again.

Then she went up to her secret chamber, and spent long hours--sobbing,
sobbing, sobbing, as if the marks of her married life on her character
could be washed away with tears.

CHAPTER XLIII

Beth had made fifty pounds in eighteen months by her beautiful
embroideries; but after her mother's death she did no more for sale,
neither did she spend the money. She had suffered so many humiliations
for want of money, it made her feel safer to have some by her. She
gave herself up to study at this time, and wrote a great deal. It was
winter now, and she was often driven down from her secret chamber to
the dining-room by the cold. When Dan came in and found her at work,
he would sniff contemptuously or facetiously, according to his mood at
the moment. "Wasting paper as usual, eh? Better be sewing on my
buttons," was his invariable remark. Not that his buttons were ever
off, or that Beth ever sewed them on either. She was too good an
organiser to do other people's work for them.

She made no reply to Dan's sallies. With him her mind was in a state
of solitary confinement always--not a good thing for her health, but
better on the whole than any attempt to discuss her ideas with him, or
to talk to him about anything, indeed, but himself.

Beth fared well that winter, however--fared well in herself, that is.
She had some glorious moments, revelling in the joy of creation. There
is a mental a