"God help all women!" she added bitterly, after a moment, as many another woman under similar and worse circumstances has cried before and since.
A more feeling man might have conceived that this was a moment in which to leave her to herself and her own thoughts, and in that it is possible that a more feeling man had been mistaken.

Ostermore, stolid and unimaginative, but not altogether without sympathy for his ward, of whom he was reasonably fond--as fond, no doubt, as it was his capacity to be for any other than himself--approached her and set a plump hand upon the back of her chair.
"What was it drove you to this ?" She turned upon him almost fiercely.

"My Lady Ostermore," she answered him.
His lordship frowned, and his eyes shifted uneasily from her face.

In his heart he disliked his wife excessively, disliked her because she was the one person in the world who governed him, who rode rough-shod over his feelings and desires; because, perhaps, she was the mother of his unfeeling, detestable son.

She may not have been the only person living to despise Lord Ostermore; but she was certainly the only one with the courage to manifest her contempt, and that in no circumscribed terms.
And yet, disliking her as he did, returning with interest her contempt of him, he veiled it, and was loyal to his termagant, never suffering himself to utter a complaint of her to others, never suffering others to censure her within his hearing.