"
They respected one another and saved one another's feelings. They
avoided those innuendoes in which husbands and wives are so fond
of indulging when their children are not listening, just as if they
wanted to say: "We have a right to say these things now we are
married."
When they had eaten the pudding, the barrister made a speech praising
the delights of one's own fireside, that refuge from the world and
from all men: that harbour where one spends one's happiest hours in
the company of one's real friends.
Mary-Louisa began to cry, and when he urged her to tell him the cause
of her distress, and the reason of her unhappiness, she told him in a
voice broken by sobs that she could see that he was missing his mother
and sisters.
He replied that he did not miss them in the least, and that he should
wish them far away if they happened to turn up now.
"But why couldn't he marry her?"
"Weren't they as good as married?"
"No, they weren't married properly."
"By a clergyman? In his opinion a clergyman was nothing but a student
who had passed his examinations, and his incantations were pure
mythology."
"That was beyond her, but she knew that something was wrong, and the
other people in the house pointed their fingers at her.
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