Oh!"-- with an angry look at her--"I suppose you thought I should want to sponge upon her?
I am as much obliged to you as usual!" A red spot rose in his wife's thin cheek.

But she turned and answered him gently, so gently that he had the rare sensation of having triumphed over her.

He allowed himself to be mollified, and she stood there over the fire, chatting with him for some time, a friendly natural note in her voice which was rare and, insensibly, soothed him like an opiate.
She chatted about Marcella's trousseau gowns, detailing her own contrivances for economy; about the probable day of the wedding, the latest gossip of the election, and so on.

He sat shading his eyes from the firelight, and now and then throwing in a word or two.

The inmost soul of him was very piteous, harrowed often by a new dread--the dread of dying.