“You will be glad to get away from here, Mary, dear, will you not? I have taken a pretty cottage for you in the country, where you will be able to have a garden, and grow plenty of flowers and fruit. You will like that, I am sure?” “I want to be with my husband,” she answered, in a voice of stern resentment. “What right have you to send me out of the way?” “But, Mary, I have thoroughly explained why what you want is impossible. And, indeed, it would not be for your happiness, my poor child.” “I am not a child, and you treat me shamefully,” she snapped. “I won’t have a cottage in the country!” “Then what will you have?” he asked, with admirable patience, although Lady Gwendolyn knew, by the inflection of his voice, how harassed and weary he was. “I will have my proper position. A married woman ought to live with her husband.” “If she can, Mary.” “And I can, and will,” she said, after the manner of a fractious child crying for the moon. “You want to hide me up, because you are jealous of my beauty, and know that I never move without a train of admirers; but I’ve often played you tricks before, and I will play you tricks again. Wherever you put me, I will run away.” “Oh, Mary!” was his reproachful exclamation. “Don’t call me Mary; I hate the name,” she said, her pale eyes dilating fiercely. “But you always do everything I don’t want you to do.” “I am sure I shall try to please you,” he answered, with gentle gravity. “I wish you would try to understand that, my dear.” He laid his hand on hers impressively; but she shook it off as if it had been a viper. Then suddenly her mood changed, and she began to whimper. Nobody cared for her. What did it signify whether she was living or dead? She would make an end of it all one of those days, that she would! She hated a cottage in the country--she hated everything! She would stamp down the flowers as soon as they put their heads above ground. It was no use talking to her! And so on, until Lady Gwendolyn could scarcely wonder that Sir Lawrence had tried to escape from such an impracticable, violent person, and began to pity him a little in her heart. He waited until the torrent of words had subsided, and then he said, with as much firmness as gentleness: “You know it is very wrong to excite yourself in this way, Mary. I never deny you anything it is right you should have, and you must try and be a little more reasonable.” “Pray, are you reasonable?” she said, with a harsh, mocking laugh. “You cried for the moon when you were a child.” “Possibly; but, you see, I don’t cry for it now. As people get older they understand that what they want is not always attainable or good for them.” “What a bore you are!” she said rudely; and turned her back upon him forthwith.