“Spend your night where you please,” said the infuriated husband, struggling against the doctor’s attempt to draw him back into his chair. “If I respect her? No, I don’t respect her. I respect nobody that ill-uses me. Get out of the way, Rosalind! I tell you I’ll turn out that woman. I’ll disgrace her. I’ll show what she’s made of. She’s thrown dust in all your eyes, but never in mine. No, Madam, never in mine; you’ve forgotten, I suppose, what you were when I took you and married you, like a fool--but I’ve never forgotten; and now to break out at your age? Who do you suppose can care for you at your age? It is for what he can get, the villain, that he comes over an old hag like you. Oh, women, women! that’s what women are. Turn out on a winter’s night to philander in the woods with some one, some--” He stopped, incapable of more, and fell back in his chair, and glared and foamed insults with his bloodless lips which he had not breath to speak. Mrs. Trevanion stood perfectly still while all this was going on. Her face showed by its sudden contraction when the grosser accusations told, but otherwise she made no movement. She held the long, dangling branch in her hand, and looked at it with a sort of half-smile. It was so small a matter to produce so much--and yet it was not a small matter. Was it the hand of fate! Was it Providence, as he said, that was on his side! But she did not say another word in self-defence. It was evident that it was her habit to stand thus, and let the storm beat. Her calm was the resignation of long usage, the sense that it was beyond remedy, that the only thing she could do was to endure. And yet the accusations of this evening were new, and there was something new in the contemplative way in which she regarded this piece of evidence which had convicted her. Hitherto the worst accusations that had rained upon her had been without evidence, without possibility--and everybody had been aware that it was so. Now there was something new. When she had borne vituperation almost as violent for her neglect, for her indifference, sometimes for her cruelty, the wrong had been too clear for any doubt. But now: never before had there even been anything to explain. But the bramble was a thing that demanded explanation. Even John Trevanion, the just and kind, had shown a gleam of surprise when he caught sight of it. The good doctor, who was entirely on her side, had given her a startled look. Rosalind, her child, had put forth a hesitating plea--a little lie for her. All this went to her heart with a wringing of pain, as if her very heart had been crushed with some sudden pressure. But the habit of endurance was unbroken even by these secret and novel pangs. She did not even meet the eyes directed to her with any attempt at self-defence. But yet the position was novel; and standing still in her old panoply of patience, she felt it to be so, and that former expedients were inadequate to the occasion.