"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." "It matters not a straw what it is," persisted Tom, adding humbug to cruelty.

"You would be nothing but a sham!--A live dishonesty! A jackdaw in peacock's feathers!--I am sorry, Letty, your own sense of truth and uprightness should not prevent even the passing desire to act such a lie.

Your fine dress would be just a fine fib--yourself would be but a walking fib.

I have been taking too much for granted with you: I must bring you no more novels.

A volume or two of Carlyle is what _you_ want." This was too much.