But there, miss,--I couldn't do anything.

I tried, oh! the Lord knows I tried! There was never no happiness between us at last, I talked so.

But I don't believe he could help himself--he's not made like other folks, isn't Jim--" Her features became convulsed again with the struggle for speech.
Marcella reached out for the toil-disfigured hand that was fingering and clutching at the edge of the settle, and held it close.

Gradually she made out that although Hurd had not been able of course to conceal his night absences from his wife, he had kept his connection with the Oxford gang absolutely dark from her, till, in his wild exultation over Westall's discomfiture in the Tudley End raid, he had said things in his restless snatches of sleep which had enabled her to get the whole truth out of him by degrees.

Her reproaches, her fears, had merely angered and estranged him; her nature had had somehow to accommodate itself to his, lest affection should lose its miserable all.
As to this last fatal attack on the Maxwell coverts, it was clear to Marcella, as she questioned and listened, that the wife had long foreseen it, and that she now knew much more about it than--suddenly--she would allow herself to say.