ith;--nor
I won't be blind to what I can't help seeing. So now, Mr. Furnival,
you may know that I have made up my mind." And then, without waiting
further parley, having wisked herself in her energy near to the door,
she stalked out, and went up with hurried steps to her own room.

Occurrences of a nature such as this are in all respects unpleasant
in a household. Let the master be ever so much master, what is he to
do? Say that his wife is wrong from the beginning to the end of the
quarrel,--that in no way improves the matter. His anxiety is that the
world abroad shall not know he has ought amiss at home; but she, with
her hot sense of injury, and her loud revolt against supposed wrongs,
cares not who hears it. "Hold your tongue, madam," the husband says.
But the wife, bound though she be by an oath of obedience, will not
obey him, but only screams the louder.

All which, as Mr. Furnival sat there thinking of it, disturbed his
mind much. That Martha Biggs would spread the tale through all
Bloomsbury and St. Pancras of course he was aware. "If she drives
me to it, it must be so," he said to himself at last. And then he
also betook himself to his rest. And so it was that preparations for
Christmas were made in Harley Street.

CHAPTER XXII

CHRISTMAS AT NONINGSBY

The house at Noningsby on Christmas-day was quite full, and yet it
was by no means a small house. Mrs. Arbuthnot, the judge's married
daughter, was there, with her three children; and Mr. Furnival was
there, having got over those domestic difficulties in which we lately
saw him as best he might; and Lucius Mason was there, having been
especially asked by Lady Staveley when she heard that his mother was
to be at The Cleeve. There could be no more comfortable country-house
than Noningsby; and it was, in its own way, pretty, though
essentially different in all respects from The Cleeve. It was a new
house from the cellar to the ceiling, and as a house was no doubt the
better for being so. All the rooms were of the proper proportion, and
all the newest appliances for comfort had been attached to it. But
nevertheless it lacked that something, in appearance rather than in
fact, which age alone can give to the residence of a gentleman in the
country. The gardens also were new, and the grounds around them trim,
and square, and orderly. Noningsby was a delightful house; no one
with money and taste at command could have created for himself one
more delightfu