Tears stood in the little lady's eyes. She had been such a good loyal wife to him, putting all her money at his disposal, and allowing him to treat it as if it were his own, and even as if she ought to be thankful to him for the comfortable home that he could not have given her himself. She had never felt any disturbance of mind on that score, and did not feel any now. They were one, and hers was his. But for the trust and obedience she had given him, never questioning his wisdom, nor failing to take his side in the repeated disputes and estrangements that had come about between them and their neighbours, he did owe her return. The time had come when she could no longer go on putting her whole trust in him, if he did not show some corresponding trust in her. He stopped in his walking up and down, and stood before her, the arrogant frown and look on his face which she knew so well. But something now told her that she must not be awed into submission by it, as previously she had always been. "Really, I don't understand you," he said. "You must leave me to conduct my own affairs in my own way, as you have always done. You can help me in the difficulties I have in my work--and they are heavy enough, God knows, with the sort of people I have to deal with here--by giving me peace and quietness in my own home. You can help me in no other way. The troubles I have fall upon my own shoulders, and I am acting rightly by you in trying to keep you unaffected by them." "But they do not only fall upon you," she said quietly. "We make friends with people, and everything seems to be going happily; and then suddenly we are not friends any longer. Often I have had to find it out for myself, and sometimes you don't even tell me what has happened to cause the change. It was so with the Beckleys. I have never known why we left off being friends with them. And I have never known why there was such disturbance before Mollie Walter was married. It would have been natural, as she was almost like your own daughter, as you so often used to say, that she should have been married from here, and that Mrs. Walter should have stayed on at the Cottage until after she was married. But her house at Wilborough was hurried on for her so that Mollie could be married from there, and you were not even asked to take part in the ceremony." He had resumed his pacing of the room during the progress of this speech, and his look was not so arrogant as it had been. "I certainly don't propose to go into old questions of that sort," he said. "They are over and done with, and--"