Page:The Aspern Papers.djvu/281

---

delayed longer to go over and master the subject. He had come back with a head full of lessons and a heart fired with the resolve to enforce them upon his own people, who, as Agatha knew, had begun to move in the same lamentable direction. As she listened to him she perceived the mistake she had made in not going to the West with him, for it was from that part of the country that he had drawn his most formidable anecdotes and examples. Of these he produced a terrific array; he spoke by book, he overflowed with facts and figures, and his wife felt herself submerged by the deep, bitter waters. She even felt what a pity it was that she had not dragged him away from that vulgar little legislator whom he had stuck to so in the train, coming from Washington; yet it did not matter—a little more or a little less—the whole affair had rubbed him so the wrong way, exasperated his taste, confounded his traditions. He proved to have disliked quite unspeakably things that she supposed he liked, to have suffered acutely on occasions when she thought he was really pleased. It would appear that there had been no occasion, except once sitting at dinner between Mrs. Redwood and Mrs. Eugene, when he was really pleased. Even his long chat with the Pennsylvania representative had made him almost ill at the time. His wife could be none the less struck with the ability which had enabled him to absorb so much knowledge in so short a time; he had not only gobbled up facts, he had arranged them in a magnificent order, and she was proud of his being so clever even when he made her bleed by the way he talked. He had had no intention whatever of this, and he was as much surprised as touched when she broke out into a