Through all the years of her life she had been either so happy in her first home, or so silently loyal to duty in her second, that no one had discovered in Daisy the existence of a strong spirit. Sweet-tempered, acquiescent, gentle, every one had known her alike in joy or under the burden of disappointment and disillusion. "As docile as Daisy" might have been a proverb in the neighborhood, so general was this view of her nature. Least of all did the selfish, surly-tempered, wilful young Englishman who was her husband, and who had ridden rough-shod over her tender thoughts and dreams these two years, suspect that she had in her the capabilities of flaming, wrathful resistance. He stared at her now, at first in utter bewilderment, then with the instinct of combat in his scowl. "Be careful what you say!" he answered, sharply. "I am in no mood for folly." "Nay, mood or no mood, I shall speak. Too long have I held my peace. You should be ashamed in every recess of your heart for what you have said and done this day!" She spoke with a vibrant fervency of feeling which for the moment pierced even his thick skin. "He was over-hasty," he muttered, in half-apology. "What I said was for his interest. I intended no offence." "Will you follow him, and say so?" "Certainly not! If he chooses to take umbrage, let him. It's no affair of mine." "Then _I_ will go--and not return until he comes with me, invited by you!" The woman's figure, scornfully erect, trembled with the excitement of the position she had on the moment assumed; but her beautiful face, refined and spiritualized of late by the imprint of womanhood's saddening wisdom, was coldly resolute. By contrast with the burly form and red, rough countenance of the man she confronted, she seemed made of another clay. "Yes, I will go!" she went on, hurriedly. "This last is too much! It is not fit that I should keep up the pretence longer." The husband burst out with a rude and somewhat hollow laugh. "Pretence, you say! Nay, madam, you miscall it. A pretence is a thing that deceives, and I have never been deceived. Do not flatter yourself. I have read you like a page of large print, these twenty months. Like the old gaffer whose feathers I ruffled here a while ago with a few words of truth, your tongue has been here, but your thoughts have been with the Dutchman in Albany!" The poor girl flushed and recoiled under the coarse insult, and the words did not come readily with which to repel it. "I know not how to answer insolence of this kind," she said, at last. "I have been badly reared for such purposes."