‘I did wyte then!’ she cried ’I wyted till near eight before I got your old telegraph!  I s’pose that’s what you call the manners of a “gentleman”, to keep your wife mewed up here, while you go gallivantin’ off with your fine friends?’

Whenever Esther was angry, which was often, she taunted Willoughby with being ‘a gentleman’, although this was the precise point about him which at other times found most favour in her eyes.  But tonight she was envenomed by the idea he had been enjoying himself without her, stung by fear lest he should have been in company with some other woman.

Willoughby, hearing the taunt, resigned himself to the inevitable.  Nothing that he could do might now avert the breaking storm; all his words would only be twisted into fresh griefs.  But sad experience had taught him that to take refuge in silence was more fatal still.  When Esther was in such a mood as this it was best to supply the fire with fuel, that, through the very violence of the conflagration, it might the sooner burn itself out.

So he said what soothing things he could, and Esther caught them up, disfigured them, and flung them back at him with scorn.  She reproached him with no longer caring for her; she vituperated the conduct of his family in never taking the smallest notice of her marriage; and she detailed the insolence of the landlady who had told her that morning she pitied ‘poor Mr. Willoughby’, and had refused to go out and buy herrings for Esther’s early dinner.

Every affront or grievance, real or imaginary, since the day she and Willoughby had first met, she poured forth with a fluency due to frequent repetition, for, with the exception of today’s added injuries, Willoughby had heard the whole litany many times before.

While she raged and he looked at her, he remembered he had once thought her pretty.  He had seen beauty in her rough brown hair, her strong colouring, her full red mouth.  He fell into musing ... a woman may lack beauty, he told himself, and yet be loved....

Meanwhile Esther reached white heats of passion, and the strain could no longer be sustained.  She broke into sobs and began to shed tears with the facility peculiar to her.  In a moment her face was all wet with the big drops which rolled down her cheeks faster and faster, and fell with audible splashes on to the table, on to her lap, on to the floor.  To this tearful abundance, formerly a surprising spectacle, Willoughby was now acclimatized; but the remnant of chivalrous feeling not yet extinguished in his bosom forbade him to sit stolidly by while a woman wept, without seeking to console her.  As on previous occasions, his peace-overtures were eventually accepted.  Esther’s tears gradually ceased to flow, she began to exhibit a sort of compunction, she wished to be forgiven, and, with the kiss of reconciliation, passed into a phase of demonstrative affection perhaps more trying to Willoughby’s patience than all