Whichever side he took, his wife was against him; not in speech, but in her look.

She was a dumb figure among the wranglers, clouded up to the neck.

Her look said she knew more of him than they knew.
He departed next day for London, after kissing his child; and he would have done wisely to abstain from his exhibition of the paternal.

Knowing it a step to conciliation, he checked his impulsive warmth, under the apprehension that the mother would take it for a piece of acting to propitiate--and his lips pecked the baby's cheek.

Its mother held arms for it immediately.
Not without reason did his heart denounce her as a mere mother, with little of a mind to see.
The recent series of feverishly sleepless nights disposed him to snappish irritability or the thirst for tenderness.