So he put her into an arm-chair, and sat on a footstool at her feet, and read her a couple of pages of the _Nineteenth Century_. It was a very poor performance indeed, hesitating, badly emphasized, with the long words slurred over. He was not at his best, for he had Annie’s fingers in one hand and his cigar in his mouth. “You read beautifully now, Harry!” said she, when he looked up for approval; and the clever, well-informed woman really thought so. “It only shows what perseverance will do,” said Harry, gravely. “I’ve read that piece aloud to myself twenty or thirty times.” CHAPTER XXVIII. Annie passed the night at Kirby Park; and, when she and Harry were sitting at breakfast the next morning, he told her he should come and see her act that night. “Then will you come up to town with me?” she asked eagerly. Her husband hesitated. “I don’t know whether I can, Annie. I have some things to see to down here before I start, and something to do in town when I get up there, so that I cannot be at your rooms till about four.” Her face clouded. “Something to do in town!” she echoed, watching him narrowly, and noting the expression into which his face had set during the last few minutes. “Is it--to see some one, Harry?” she asked timidly. “Yes, a business appointment.” “Oh, Harry, it is to see Stephen, I know! What are you going to do? What are you going to say? You look as if you would kill him!” “Don’t be afraid. How could I condescend to touch the little misshapen wretch, who has not as much strength in his whole body as I have in one finger? But I am going to see him, and to-day.” She saw that it was impossible to alter her husband’s resolutions, so she desisted from her persuasions; but there was a terrible fear at her heart which she could not shake off. She knew the violence of her husband’s temper, and feared it all the more under this new aspect of repression. She made up her mind to go to Stephen and warn him of Harry’s coming, and to beg him not to exasperate her husband further by any attempt at concealment and false excuses, but to make a frank confession, such as would, she felt sure, be more likely than anything else to avert Harry’s anger. Once resolved on this course, she let the conversation turn to indifferent subjects, and it was not until breakfast was nearly over that she pretended to remember an appointment with her dressmaker which would make it necessary for her to go up to town before luncheon. She did it too naturally to excite in her husband any suspicions of her good faith, and he went to the station with her, and parted with her very reluctantly, although he expected to be with her again in a few hours. Annie herself felt something more than reluctance; she was seized with a foreboding of evil. “Ah, Harry,” she said, laying a trembling hand upon his arm, “I wish I were not married to you!” “Why?” asked he, startled.