Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/275

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ing now clearly that he was going to get the worst of whatever was to come.

"Think of me in total, ridiculous ignorance all this spring and summer of how things were going with you," she began, and her wrath was almost melted into tears by sympathy for her own wrongs. "Think of me dragging you to teas, to golf matches, to I don't know what, holding my head high and serene, parading my husband everywhere as a paragon of business genius, bragging about him idiotically! Think of me running about with Sir Brian, taking him off on the yachting trip, and leaving you at home fighting for your life almost—and me finding fault with you because you didn't come to meet us even. Why you—you—don't you see what a cruel position it was to put me in? People must either have thought me a fool who couldn't understand, or a wife so indiscreet she could not be trusted with her husband's business secrets, or too heartless to care simply because she was rich on her own account. Probably they think me all three."

"Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!" George groaned distressfully. "Is that the way you figure it out?"

"You must be blind," his wife accused. "Wasn't I going around boasting about your cleverness in cutting the prices on your Nemo model at the very time when everybody I was