‘Much to say!--a great deal too much I don’t doubt,’ he said; ‘if you think this sort of thing will do for me, you are mistaken, Isabel. You may as well know at once. I am not the man to be trifled with. My wife must obey me--do you understand? I can’t have two wills in my house. My wife must obey me!’ he went on, striking his hand against the table. ‘I have borne as much of your self-will as I mean to bear. My wife must have no will but mine.’ Isabel looked at him as from some height of knowledge, feeling no movement of anger, no irritation at his words. Oh! to think he should be occupied about matters so trifling at a moment so terrible! To get his wife to obey him! Could he care for that, when this life was over, blasted in a moment, and nothing remained for either of them but a blank existence of despair? Her heart bled for him, making himself angry thus at the merest trifles, not knowing what was to come. ‘The dinner is coming,’ she said, wondering at herself that she could form the words, ‘and the woman will be in the room. Would you wait till it is over? And you must want food and support,’ she added, with an ineffable pity. It was not the pity of love. It was the compassion with which she might have fortified a criminal with food and wine, before telling him the awful news of his approaching execution--a human sentiment of pity for a weak creature in unconscious peril, about to be strained to the utmost, and unaware of it. He gave her an angry look, to see what she meant, but could not divine it, so wrapt was she in the unconscious elevation and tragic seriousness of the crisis. He did not know what a crisis it was. And he could not understand the strange superiority of her calm. ‘And then the inconsistency of it,’ he said, moodily placing himself at the head of the table. ‘You pretend to want me to stay, and when I begin to entertain the idea, and was actually in treaty for some land, you step in, in your perversity, and break it off by disobeying my orders. What did you mean by it? What reason could you have? By Jove! if I had gone off at once and never come near you again, it would have served you right.’