Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/21

Rh "You too have suffered, I suppose."

"I suffered much, at first."

"When was that?"

"Two years ago; and two years hence you will be as calm as I am now,—and far, far happier, I trust, for you are a man, and free to act as you please."

Something like a smile, but a very bitter one, crossed his face for a moment.

"You have not been happy lately?" he said with a kind of effort to regain composure, and a determination to waive the further discussion of his own calamity.

"Happy!" I repeated, almost provoked at such a question—"Could I be so, with such a husband?"

"I have noticed a change in your appearance, since the first years of your marriage," pursued he: "I observed it to—to that infernal demon," he muttered between his teeth—"and he said it was your own sour temper that was eating away your bloom: it was making you