This was replied to with what sounded more like a grunt than a vocal expression.
"Cara," at length said Ellis, forcing himself to the unpleasant work on hand, "I would like to have a little plain talk with you about my affairs." He tried, in saying this, to seem not to be very serious; but his feelings, which had for some time been on the rack, were too painfully excited to admit of this.

He both looked and expressed, in the tones of his voice, the trouble he felt.
Now, just at the moment Ellis said this, his wife was on the eve of making the announcement, in rather a peremptory and dogmatic way, that if he didn't give her the money to buy new parlour carpets, for which she had been asking as much as a year past, she would go and order them, and have the bill sent in to him.

All day this subject had been in her mind, and she had argued herself into the belief that her husband was perfectly able, not only to afford her new carpets, but also new parlour furniture; and that his unwillingness to do so arose from a penurious spirit.

Such being her state of mind, she was not prepared to see in the words, voice, and look of her husband the real truth that it was so important for her to know.

From the beginning of their married life, she had been disposed to spend freely, and he to restrain her.