"It seemed rather _quiet_ at first--I had always been used to such a noisy house, and I missed the boys' chatter a little, perhaps; but _indeed_, INDEED, that was all!" "Was it?
I dare say! I dare say!" he says, soothingly.
"You shall _not_ leave me behind," say I, still weeping with stormy bitterness.

"I _will not_ be left behind! What business have you to go without me?
Am I to be only a fair-weather wife to you?
to go shares in all your pleasant things, and then--when any thing hard or disagreeable comes--to be left out.

I tell you" (looking up at him with streaming eyes) "that I _will not_! I WILL NOT!" "My darling!" he says, looking most thoroughly concerned, I do not fancy that crying women have formed a large part of his life-experience--"you misunderstand me! I will own to you, that five minutes ago I did you an injustice; but _now_ I know, I am thoroughly convinced, that you would follow me without a murmur or a sulky look to the world's end--and" (laughing) "be frightfully sea-sick all the way; but" (kindly patting my heaving shoulder) "do you think that I want to be hampered with a little invalid?
and, supposing that I took you with me, whom should I have to look after things at Tempest, and keep them straight for me against I come home ?" "I know what it is," I cry, passionately clinging round his neck, "you think I do not like you! I _see_ it! twenty times a day, in a hundred things that you do and leave undone! but indeed, _indeed_, you never were more mistaken in all your life! I will own to you that I did not care _very_ much about you at first.

I thought you good, and kind, and excellent, but I was not _fond_ of you; but _now_, every day, every hour that I live, I like you better! Ask Barbara, ask the boys if I do not! I like you ten thousand times better than I did the day I married you!" "_Like_ me!" he repeats a little dreamily, looking with a strong and bitter yearning into my eyes; then, seeing that I am going to asseverate, "for God's sake, child," he says, hastily, "do not tell me that you _love_ me, for I know it is not true! you can no more help it than I can help caring for you in the idiotic, mad way, that I do! Perhaps, on some blessed, far-off day, you may be able to say so, and I to believe it, but not now!--_not now_!".