a village parlour--a scorn that kept its freshness in
a very tainted air. There was the taint of her sister-in-law: did her
husband judge only by the Countess Gemini? This lady very often lied,
and she had practised deceptions that were not simply verbal. It was
enough to find these facts assumed among Osmond's traditions--it was
enough without giving them such a general extension. It was her scorn
of his assumptions, it was this that made him draw himself up. He
had plenty of contempt, and it was proper his wife should be as well
furnished; but that she should turn the hot light of her disdain upon
his own conception of things--this was a danger he had not allowed for.
He believed he should have regulated her emotions before she came to
it; and Isabel could easily imagine how his ears had scorched on his
discovering he had been too confident. When one had a wife who gave one
that sensation there was nothing left but to hate her.

She was morally certain now that this feeling of hatred, which at first
had been a refuge and a refreshment, had become the occupation and
comfort of his life. The feeling was deep, because it was sincere; he
had had the revelation that she could after all dispense with him. If
to herself the idea was startling, if it presented itself at first as a
kind of infidelity, a capacity for pollution, what infinite effect might
it not be expected to have had upon HIM? It was very simple; he
despised her; she had no traditions and the moral horizon of a
Unitarian minister. Poor Isabel, who had never been able to understand
Unitarianism! This was the certitude she had been living with now for
a time that she had ceased to measure. What was coming--what was before
them? That was her constant question. What would he do--what ought SHE
to do? When a man hated his wife what did it lead to? She didn't hate
him, that she was sure of, for every little while she felt a passionate
wish to give him a pleasant surprise. Very often, however, she felt
afraid, and it used to come over her, as I have intimated, that she
had deceived him at the very first. They were strangely married, at all
events, and it was a horrible life. Until that morning he had scarcely
spoken to her for a week; his manner was as dry as a burned-out
fire. She knew there was a special reason; he was displeased at Ralph
Touchett's staying on in Rome. He thought she saw too much of her
cousin--he had told her a week before it was indecent she shoul