The idea of taking my mother seriously!" He burst out laughing again.

"My darling, you don't know how you amuse me." It was all forced: it was all unnatural.

He, the most delicate, the most refined of men--a gentleman in the highest sense of the word--was coarse and loud and vulgar! My heart sank under a sudden sense of misgiving which, with all my love for him, it was impossible to resist.

In unutterable distress and alarm I asked myself, "Is my husband beginning to deceive me?
is he acting a part, and acting it badly, before we have been married a week ?" I set myself to win his confidence in a new way.
He was evidently determined to force his own point of view on me.

I determined, on my side, to accept his point of view.
"You tell me I don't understand your mother," I said, gently.