Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/62

52 and through them, perhaps into the world; and beside my abandoned wretch of a husband, the base, malignant Grimsby, and the false villain Hargrave, this boarish ruffian, coarse and brutal as he was, shone like a glow-worm in the dark, among its fellow worms.

What a scene was this! Could I ever have imagined that I should be doomed to bear such insults under my own roof—to hear such things spoken in my presence—nay spoken to me and of me—and by those who arrogated to themselves the name of gentlemen? And could I have imagined that I should have been able to endure it as calmly, and to repel their insults as firmly and as boldly as I had done? A hardness such as this, is taught by rough experience and despair alone.

Such thoughts as these, chased one another through my mind, as I paced to and fro the room, and longed—oh, how I longed to take my child and leave them now, without an hour's delay! But it could not be: there was work before me—hard work, that must be done.