house should be a house of refuge from care, not an abode of trouble, on whose behalf, were it possible, he would make the very air softer, and the flowers sweeter than their wont, to whom he would declare, were such words possible to his tongue, that of him and of his house, and of all things there, she was the mistress, whether she would condescend to love him or no,—­that one was his cousin Hetta.  And now he had been told by his guest that he had been so rough to her that she and her daughter must return to London!

And he could not acquit himself.  He knew that he had been rough.  He had said very hard words.  It was true that he could not have expressed his meaning without hard words, nor have repressed his meaning without...