, and now she burst out into a flood
of tears. It was to her a terrible outrage. I do not know that a
woman is very much the worse because her husband may forget himself
on an occasion and "rap out an oath at her," as he would call it when
making the best of his own sin. Such an offence is compatible with
uniform kindness and most affectionate consideration. I have known
ladies who would think little or nothing about it,--who would go no
farther than the mildest protest,--"Do remember where you are!" or,
"My dear John!"--if no stranger were present. But then a wife should
be initiated into it by degrees; and there are different tones of
bad language, of which by far the most general is the good-humoured
tone. We all of us know men who never damn their servants, or any
inferiors, or strangers, or women,--who in fact keep it all for
their bosom friends; and if a little does sometimes flow over in
the freedom of domestic life, the wife is apt to remember that she
is the bosomest of her husband's friends, and so to pardon the
transgression. But here the word had been uttered with all its
foulest violence, with virulence and vulgarity. It seemed to the
victim to be the sign of a terrible crisis in her early married
life,--as though the man who had so spoken to her could never again
love her, never again be kind to her, never again be sweetly gentle
and like a lover. And as he spoke it he looked at her as though he
would like to tear her limbs asunder. She was frightened as well as
horrified and astounded. She had not a word to say to him. She did
not know in what language to make her complaint of such treatment.
She burst into tears, and throwing herself on the sofa hid her face
in her hands. "You provoke me to be violent," he said. But still she
could not speak to him. "I come away from the city, tired with work
and troubled with a thousand things, and you have not a kind word to
say to me." Then there was a pause, during which she still sobbed.
"If your father has anything to say to me, let him say it. I shall
not run away. But as to going to him of my own accord with a story as
long as my arm about my own affairs, I don't mean to do it." Then he
paused a moment again. "Come, old girl, cheer up! Don't pretend to
be broken-hearted because I used a hard word. There are worse things
than that to be borne in the world."

"I--I--I was so startled, Ferdinand."

"A man can't always remember that he isn't with another man. Don't