Mrs. Theobald was not prepared for so sudden an assumption of
importance. Her nerves, never of the strongest, had been strung to
their highest tension by the event of the morning. She wanted to
escape observation; she was conscious of looking a little older than
she quite liked to look as a bride who had been married that
morning; she feared the landlady, the chambermaid, the waiter-
everybody and everything; her heart beat so fast that she could hardly
speak, much less go through the ordeal of ordering dinner in a strange
hotel with a strange landlady. She begged and prayed to be let off. If
Theobald would only order dinner this once, she would order it any day
and every day in future.
But the inexorable Theobald was not to be put off with such absurd
excuses. He was master now. Had not Christina less than two hours
ago promised solemnly to honour and obey him, and was she turning
restive over such a trifle as this? The loving smile departed from his
face, and was succeeded by a scowl which that old Turk, his father,
might have envied. "Stuff and nonsense, my dearest Christina," he
exclaimed mildly, and stamped his foot upon the floor of the carriage.
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