She set down her teacup with a jerk; her handsome face grew red with anger, but still she did not venture a word, she had not lived three years with Dr.Grey without finding out that when the master of the house did choose to exercise authority, he must be obeyed.

He very seldom interfered, especially as regarded the children; like most simple-minded men, he was humble about himself, and left a great deal to his womankind; but when he did interfere it was decisive.

Even Miss Gascoigne felt instinctively that she might have wrangled and jangled for an hour and at the end of it he would have said, almost as gently as he had said it now, "The children will breakfast with us to-morrow." Christian, too, was surprised, and something more.

She had thought her husband so exceedingly quiet that sometimes her own high spirit winced a little at his passiveness; that is, she knew it would have done had she been her own natural self, and not in the strange, dreamy, broken-down state, which seemed to take interest in nothing.

Still, she felt some interest in seeing Dr.Grey appear, though but in a trivial thing, rather different from what she had at first supposed him.