Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/303

 If you make a bother I wont come home at all, so there you have it!”

“You’re a bad husband and a beast!” was Bessie’s retort.

Shortly after that Bessie received information of such grave misconduct on her husband’s part that she all but resolved to forsake the house, and with the children seek refuge under her parents’ roof at Woolwich. Sam had been seen in indescribable company; no permissible words would characterise the individuals with whom he had roamed shamelessly on the pavement of Oxford Street. When he next met her, quite sober and with exasperatingly innocent expression, Bessie refused to open her lips. Neither that evening nor the next would she utter a word to him,—and the effort it cost her was tremendous. The result was, that on the third evening Sam did not appear.

It was a week after Clem’s trial. Jane had been keeping to herself as much as possible, but, having occasion to go down into the kitchen late at night, she found Bessie in tears, utterly miserable.

“Don’t bother about me!” was the reply to her sympathetic question. “You’ve got