After one of these glances she said, in a tone which was not exactly hostile, but had a note of suspicion: 

‘I’d give something to know why he’s going to marry Clara Hewett.’

‘Not the first time you’ve made that remark,’ returned Joseph, without looking up from his paper.

‘I suppose I can speak?’

‘Oh, yes.  But I’d try to do so in a more lady-like way.’

Clem flashed at him a gleam of hatred.  He had become fond lately of drawing attention to her defects of breeding.  Clem certainly did not keep up with his own progress in the matter of external refinement; his comments had given her a sense of inferiority, which irritated her solely as meaning that she was not his equal in craft.  She let a minute or two pass, then returned to the subject.

’There’s something at the bottom of it; I know that.  Of course you know more about it than you pretend.’

Joseph leaned back in his chair and regarded her with a smile of the loftiest scorn.

’It never occurs to you to explain it in the simplest way, of course, If ever you hear of a marriage, the first thing you ask yourself is:  What has he or she to gain by it?  Natural enough—­in you.  Now do you really suppose that all marriages come about in the way that yours did—­on your side, I mean?’

Clem was far too dull-witted to be capable of quick retort.  She merely replied: 

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

’Of course not.  But let me assure you that people sometimes think of other things besides making profit when they get married.  It’s a pity that you always show yourself so coarse-minded.’

Joseph was quite serious in administering this rebuke.  He really felt himself justified in holding the tone of moral superiority.  The same phenomenon has often been remarked in persons conscious that their affairs are prospering, and whose temptations to paltry meanness are on that account less frequent.

‘And what about yourself?’ asked his wife, having found her retort at length.  ‘Why did you want to marry me, I’d like to know?’

’Why?  You are getting too modest.  How could I live in the same house with such a good-looking and sweet-tempered and well-behaved—­’

‘Oh, shut up!’ she exclaimed, in a voice such as one hears at the street-corner.  ‘It was just because you thought we was goin’ to be fools enough to keep you in idleness.  Who was the fool, after all?’

Joseph smiled, and returned to his newspaper.  In satisfaction at having reduced him to silence, Clem laughed aloud and clattered with the knife on her plate.  As she was doing so there came a knock at the door.

‘A gentleman wants to know if you’re in, sir,’ said the house-thrall, showing a smeary face.  ‘Mr. Byass is the name.’

‘Mr. Byass?  I’ll go down and see him.’

Clem’s face became alive with suspicion.  In spite of her careless attire she intercepted Joseph, and bade the servant ask Mr. Byass to come upstairs.  ‘How can you go down without a collar?’ she said to her husband.