“There’s no time like the present,” he said harshly; “your manners were detestable to-day; you treated people like dogs!” She laughed bitterly. “For instance?” she said, “Lily Osborne?” “Mrs. Osborne knows better than to care!” “She should!” Margaret mocked, “she should expect it; I congratulate you on her admirable humility.” He gnawed his lip, the veins swelling in his forehead. “I warn you!” he cried fiercely, “I will not permit such behavior--your dance at the musicale is the talk of the town, and now you receive people who come here with indifference--and I’m a Cabinet minister!” “Which is a miracle!” his wife replied, laughing softly and provokingly; “you made a mistake in your marriage, Wicklow; you should have chosen a more popular person.” “I’m aware of my mistake!” he retorted, still walking, and picking up first one knick-knack and then another and setting them down again; “I was a damned fool! I thought you witty and fond of society; I fancied you a success and you can be one if you choose, but everything’s upside down with your whims. You keep Fox hanging around here--you know that he and I are at sword’s points in politics, you know that he--” “Leave him out please!” Margaret interposed in a cold, hard voice. She had risen and her eyes glowed with passion. White turned a lowering look on her. “Fox didn’t marry you!” he said cuttingly, “he was too wise!” She made no reply; she could have answered that she had given up Fox to marry him, but the sting of the insult cut her to the quick, his allusive familiar tone was a whiplash. She turned away, her white face set, a singular light in her eyes. The passion of her hatred of him at that moment was almost beyond restraint; her very flesh quivered under the throb of her maddened nerves. His coarseness, his brutality, his sensuousness revolted her; she felt, under the sting of his lecture, a mere bondswoman, and her fetters fairly burned into her soul. It seemed to her that she could no longer breathe the same air with him. The child caught her sleeve timidly. “Mamma, don’t!” she whispered, “please don’t make papa look so--I’m afraid!” Margaret looking down at her saw anew that hateful likeness. “Go away!” she shuddered, “you’re just like him--I can’t bear it; go, I tell you!” The child’s hand dropped and her lip quivered with impotent anguish; she could not understand, but she read her mother’s chilled, repellant look and it frightened her still more; she drew her arm across her face and fell away with a sob. Margaret, whose heart would have been touched at another moment, hardly heard her. “I want you to understand,” White began again, angrily, unmindful of the little girl’s presence, “my position. I’m a--” Margaret interrupted him with an impatient gesture. “Gertrude is coming with my gown,” she said coolly, “I think you may spare me any more at present.”