But
when, pleased as any little girl with the prospect of a party and
a new frock, she told him, with gleeful gratitude, of the
invitation and the heavenly kindness which had rendered it
possible for her to accept it, the countenance of the great man
changed. He rejected the idea of her going with him to any
gathering of his grand friends--objected most of all to her going
to Mrs. Redmain's. Alas! he had begun to allow to himself that he
had married in too great haste--and beneath him. Wherever he
went, his wife could be no credit to him, and her presence would
take from him all sense of liberty! Not choosing, however, to
acknowledge either of these objections, and not willing, besides,
to appear selfish in the eyes of the woman who had given herself
to him, he was only too glad to put all upon another, to him
equally genuine ground. Controlling his irritation for the
moment, he set forth with lordly kindness the absolute
impossibility of accepting such an offer as Mary's. Could she for
a moment imagine, he said, that he would degrade himself by
taking his wife out in a dress that was not her own?
Here Letty interrupted him.
"Mary has given me the dress," she sobbed, "--for my very own."
"A second-hand dress! A dress that has been worn!" cried Tom.
"How could you dream of insulting me so? The thing is absolutely
impossible. Why, Letty, just think!--There should I be, going
about as if the house were my own, and there would be my wife in
the next room, or perhaps at my elbow, dressed in the finery of
the lady's-maid of the house! It won't bear thinking of! I
declare it makes me so ashamed, as I lie here, that I feel my
face quite hot in the dark! To have to reason about such a thing
--with my own wife, too!"
"It's not finery," sobbed Letty, laying hold of the one fact
within her reach; "it's a beautiful black silk.
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