Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/16

6 me. He started and stood still a moment; then wiped his streaming forehead, and advancing towards me, with a kind of unnatural composure, said in a deep, almost sepulchral tone—

"Mrs. Huntingdon, I must leave you tomorrow."

"To-morrow!" I repeated, "I do not ask the cause."

"You know it then—and you can be so calm!" said he, surveying me with profound astonishment, not unmingled with a kind of resentful bitterness, as it appeared to me.

"I have so long been aware of—" I paused in time, and added, "of my husband's character, that nothing shocks me."

"But this—how long have you been aware of this?" demanded he, laying his clenched hand on the table beside him, and looking me keenly and fixedly in the face.

I felt like a criminal.

"Not long," I answered.