This was clearly not the case at
Okehurst. Mrs. Oke evidently did not trouble herself about her husband in
the very least; he might say or do any amount of silly things without
rebuke or even notice; and he might have done so, had he chosen, ever since
his wedding-day. You felt that at once. Mrs. Oke simply passed over his
existence. I cannot say she paid much attention to any one's, even to mine.
At first I thought it an affectation on her part--for there was something
far-fetched in her whole appearance, something suggesting study, which
might lead one to tax her with affectation at first; she was dressed in a
strange way, not according to any established aesthetic eccentricity, but
individually, strangely, as if in the clothes of an ancestress of the
seventeenth century. Well, at first I thought it a kind of pose on her
part, this mixture of extreme graciousness and utter indifference which she
manifested towards me. She always seemed to be thinking of something else;
and although she talked quite sufficiently, and with every sign of superior
intelligence, she left the impression of having been as taciturn as her
husband.
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