servants to move the fish towards his master, who was the usual carver. For some minutes Mr. Carlton played with his dinner—played with it; did not eat it—and then he sent away his plate nearly untouched—and that he appeared to do throughout the meal. Lady Laura observed it, but said nothing; she certainly was, as the servants expressed it amongst themselves, “put out,” and when she did speak it was only in monosyllables or abrupt sentences.
“Are you going out this evening, Laura?” asked Mr. Carlton.
“No.”
“I thought you were engaged to the Newberrys.”
“I am not going.”
He ceased; he saw, as well as the servants, that the lady was out of sorts. She never spoke another word until the cloth was drawn, the dessert on the table, and the servants gone. Mr. Carlton poured out two glasses of wine and handed one to Lady Laura. She did not thank him; she did not take the glass.
“Shall I give you some grapes, my love?”
“Your love!” she burst forth, with scornful, mocking emphasis, “how dare you insult me by calling me ‘your love?’ Go to your other loves, Mr. Carlton, and leave me; it is time you did.”
He looked up, astounded at the outbreak; innocent in himself, so far as he knew, of anything that could have caused it.
“Laura! What is the matter?”
“You know,” she replied; “your conscience tells you. How dare you so insult me, Mr. Carlton?”
“I have not insulted you; I am not conscious of any offence against you. What has put you out?”
“Oh, fool that I was,” she passionately wailed, “to desert, for you, my father’s home! What has boon my recompense? disinheritance by my father, desertion by my family, that I might have expected; but what has my recompense been from you?”
“Laura, I protest I do not know what can have caused this; If you have anything to say against me, say it out”
" You do know,” she retorted. “Oh, it is shameful! shameful so to treat me!—to bring this contumely upon me! I, an earl’s daughter!”
" You must be out of your mind,” exclaimed Mr. Carlton, half doubting perhaps whether such was not the fact. “What ‘contumely’ have I brought upon you?”
“Don’t insult me further! don’t attempt to defend yourself!” retorted Laura, well nigh mad indeed with passion. “Think rather of yourself, of your own conduct. Such transgressions on the part of a married man reflect bitter disgrace and humiliation upon the wife; they expose her to the contemptuous pity of the world. And they have so exposed me.”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed Mr. Carlton, growing cross, for this was but a repetition of scenes enacted before. “I thought these heroics, these bickerings, were done with. Remember what you said last night. What has raked them up?”
“You ask me what has raked them up!—Ask yourself, Mr. Carlton. You know too well.”
“By heaven, I do not! I have no more notion what you mean than that!" He raised a wine glass as he spoke, and bringing it down again too fiercely, the fragments were shattered over the mahogany table.
The burst half frightened Laura. Mr. Carlton’s temper was impassive as his face, and she had never witnessed such from him before. Perhaps he was surprised at himself. But he had gone home full of inward trouble, and the attack, so uncalled for, was more than ho could patiently bear.
“If you wish me to understand you, Laura, so as to be able to give you any answer, you must be more explanatory,” he said, resuming his equable tone of calmness.
Lady Laura’s lips quivered, and she leaned over the table, speaking in a whisper, low as the unsatisfactory topic deserved.
“In that cottage of Tupper’s on the Rise, a woman and a child are living. The child is yours!"
An extraordinary change, possibly caused by surprise at the accusation, possibly by indignation, passed over the aspect of Mr. Carlton. His face grew livid, his white lips parted. Laura noted all.
“It tells home, does it!” she exclaimed in a tone of utter scorn. “I knew your conscience would accuse you. What have I done, I ask, that this shameless woman should be brought hither to insult me? Could you not have kept her where she came from? must you bring her here and parade her in my very presence?”
Mr. Carlton wiped the moisture from his face and recalled his senses, which seemed to have been scattered. He looked at his wife in very amazement.
“Suspect that woman of———You are a fool, Laura, if you are not mad. I beg your par don, but it must be one of the two. Until this day, when I was called in to attend the child, the woman was an utter stranger to me.