"I wish to Heaven I were as cold as I appear." And she had really said it later on.

Hugh never did accuse her of coldness, but that was a detail.

Those words, conned over many times, had nevertheless actually proceeded out of her mouth.

Few of us have the power of saying anything we intend to say.

But Lady Newhaven had that power, and enjoyed also in consequence a profound belief in her prophetic instincts; while others, Hugh not excepted, detected a premeditated tone in her conversation, and a sense of incongruity between her remarks and the occasion which called them forth.
From an early date in their married life Lord Newhaven had been in the habit of discounting these remarks by making them in rapid rotation himself before proceeding to the matter in hand.
"Having noticed that a mother--I mean a young mother--is never really happy in the absence of her children, and that their affection makes up for the carelessness of their father, may I ask, Violet, what day you wish to return to Westhope ?" he said one morning at breakfast.
"Any day," she replied.