His ears heated.

Undoubtedly he could crush her.

Yet, supposing her to speak to his ears, she would say: 'You married a young woman, and have been foiling and fooling her ever since, giving her half a title to the name of wife, and allowing her in consequence to be wholly disfigured before the world--your family naturally her chief enemies, who would otherwise (Charlotte would proclaim it) have been her friends.

What! your intention was (one could hear Charlotte's voice) to smack the world in the face, and you smacked your young wife's instead!' His intention had been nothing of the sort.

He had married, in a foreign city, a young woman who adored him, whose features, manners, and carriage of her person satisfied his exacting taste in the sex; and he had intended to cast gossipy England over the rail and be a traveller for the remainder of his days.