"Dr. Twelves told me that I should have twenty thousand pounds." "Did he? I see. That was the bait. You're a ready-witted young woman." "You mean that you think I'm a fool." "Not at all; no more than the rest of your sex, or, for the matter of that, of mine. We're all fools; only some of us are fools of a special brand. Who are you?" "I'm your wife." "You've told me that already. I mean who were you before you were my wife?" She moved her hand to and fro, restlessly, upon the window sill. "I've half a mind to tell you." "Make it a whole one. Yours should be a story not without features of interest. Besides, a husband ought to know something about his wife." She stood up straighter, her back to the window, looking towards the bed with gleaming eyes. It was evidently easier to provoke her to an exhibition of temper than him. "I'll tell you nothing. I'm your wife; that's all I'll tell you; and that ought to be enough." "It is--more than enough. You're an embodied epigram. I think I can guess at part of your story." The indifferent, almost assured tone in which he said it brought her near to wincing. "My eyes are not so bright as they were--no, not so bright--but they're bright enough to enable me to perceive that you're young, and not bad-looking--after a sufficiently common type. You appear to be one of those big, bouncing, blusterous, bonny--four b's--young females who spring out of the gutter by the mere force of their own vitality; who push and elbow themselves through life with but one thing continually in view--self. You're probably ill-bred, ignorant, impudent and imbecile--four i's--four which are apt to go together--and, in consequence, blundering along rather than advancing by any reasonable method of progression, you'll keep tumbling into ditches and scrambling out again, until you tumble into one which will be too deep for you to scramble out of, and in that you'll lie for ever." To hear him, in his dim, distant, uninterested tones, mapping out, as it were, a chart of her life and conduct, affected her unpleasantly. When he had finished she had to pull herself together before she could deliver a retort which she was conscious was sufficiently futile. "I daresay you think yourself clever." "I'm afraid you're disappointed. If I'm not altogether to be congratulated on having you for a wife, neither are you to be altogether congratulated on having me for a husband." "Congratulated! My stars!" "Exactly--your lucky stars. Come, I've drawn a little fancy sketch of the kind of wife you appear to me to be; tell me, what kind of husband do you think I am?" "Think! I don't think; I'm sure you're a monster. You ought to be in Barnum's show--that's where you ought to be." "That is your candid opinion? Your tone has the ring of genuine candour. It's an illustration of how one changes. Would you believe that once--not so long ago--I was remarkable for my good looks as well as my figure?" "Tell that for a tale!"