red no inconvenience from his
thoughtless conduct, they tacitly agreed to let the matter rest. That
was on the surface. Inwardly, the differences were more marked. Even in
the mental attitude they adopted towards what had happened, husband and
wife were thoroughly dissimilar. Mary did not refer to it because she
thought it would be foolish to re-open so disagreeable a subject. In
her own mind, however, she faced it frankly, dating back to it as the
night when Purdy had been so odious and Richard so angry. Mahony, on
the other hand, gave the affair a wide berth even in thought. For him
it was a kind of Pandora's box, of which, having once caught a glimpse
of the contents, he did not again dare to raise the lid. Things might
escape from it that would alter his whole life. But he, too, dated from
it in the sense of suddenly becoming aware, with a throb of regret,
that he had left his youth behind him. And such phrases as: "When I was
young," "In my younger days," now fell instinctively from his lips.

Nor was this all. Deep down in Mary's soul there slumbered a slight
embarrassment; one she could not get the better of: it spread and grew.
This was a faint, ever so faint a doubt of Richard's wisdom. Odd she
had long known him to be, different in many small and some great ways
from those they lived amongst; but hitherto this very oddness of his
had seemed to her an outgrowth on the side of superiority--fairer
judgment, higher motives. Just as she had always looked up to him as
rectitude in person, so she had thought him the embodiment of a fine,
though somewhat unworldly wisdom. Now her faith in his discernment was
shaken. His treatment of her on the night of the ball had shocked,
confused her. She was ready to make allowance for him: she had told her
story clumsily, and had afterwards been both cross and obstinate; while
part of his violence was certainly to be ascribed to his coming
breakdown. But this did not cover everything; and the ungenerous spirit
in which he had met her frankness, his doubt of her word, of her good
faith--his utter unreasonableness in short--had left a cold patch of
astonishment in her, which would not yield. She lit on it at unexpected
moments. Meanwhile, she groped for an epithet that would fit his
behaviour. Beginning with some rather vague and high-flown terms she
gradually came down, until with the sense of having found the right
thing at last, she fixed on the adjective "silly"--a word which, f