The poor fellow was constantly
straining after an explanation of his wife's peculiarities; and although
the effort was probably unconscious, it caused him a great deal of pain.
The gash--the maniac-frown, as my friend calls it--between his eyebrows,
seemed to have grown a permanent feature of his face.
Mrs. Oke, on her side, was making the very worst of the situation. Perhaps
she resented her husband's tacit reproval of that masquerade night's freak,
and determined to make him swallow more of the same stuff, for she clearly
thought that one of William's peculiarities, and one for which she despised
him, was that he could never be goaded into an outspoken expression of
disapprobation; that from her he would swallow any amount of bitterness
without complaining. At any rate she now adopted a perfect policy of
teasing and shocking her husband about the murder of Lovelock. She was
perpetually alluding to it in her conversation, discussing in his presence
what had or had not been the feelings of the various actors in the tragedy
of 1626, and insisting upon her resemblance and almost identity with the
original Alice Oke. Something had suggested to her eccentric mind that it
would be delightful to perform in the garden at Okehurst, under the huge
ilexes and elms, a little masque which she had discovered among Christopher
Lovelock's works; and she began to scour the country and enter into vast
correspondence for the purpose of effectuating this scheme.
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