Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/167

Rh conveying to her mouth the juice which had exuded from crisp rashers. As usual, they had very little to say to each other. Clem looked at her husband now and then, from under her eyebrows, surreptitiously. 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