Mr. Guyon could never, even in his most amiable moods, have been called a patient man, long-suffering was not one of his virtues; and under his son-in-law's long face and absent manner he suffered acutely. His little _mots_ passed unsmiled at, his anecdotes of the aristocracy evidently had not been listened to; he felt that he was throwing the pearls of his West-end refinement before City swine; and he was highly indignant. But not with Streightley--or at least he dared not openly declare his indignation to his son-in-law--it was on Katharine that he turned the heavy-guns of his wrath, and rebuked his daughter with an acrimony which might have had serious effect on a less self-possessed young lady. "I come here," said Mr. Guyon one morning in the library, where he had gone to write a letter, and where he found Katharine similarly employed,--"I come here to your house, and I find your husband an altered man. He has lost that cheerfulness, that energy, that buoyancy which distinguished him, and, in fact, he's become a doosid unpleasant dreary bird. How's this? Cheerful before marriage, and miserable after; looks as if marriage was the cause, doesn't it, Kate? And to think that my daughter has not--not striven to--to what d'ye call--bless the lot of the man who--doubles his joys and halves his sorrows, and all that kind of thing? Am I to think that you--but no, that could not be! I must remember----" "You must remember, papa, if you please," said Kate, looking him full in the face, and speaking in a low stern voice,--"you must remember the manner in which and the conditions under which I married my husband! And, remembering them, you must be good enough never to dare--it is a strong word to use to one's father, but I repeat it--never to dare to address me in this way again. I know my duty to my husband, and--according to my lights, and under the peculiar circumstances of our union--I do it!"