When she spoke it was with an
armor-like sarcasm protecting and covering her feelings. He was
continually surprised at the correctness of her attitude toward Savina;
his wife could know nothing; she was even without the legitimate
foundation of a suspicion; but her bearing had a perceptible frostiness
of despair. What, he wondered moodily, would next, immediately,
develop? Something, certainly--Fanny's accumulations of emotion were
always sharply discharged; they grew in silence but they were expended
in edged words.
In a way he was glad that he had made the error of speaking about
William Grove's absence in Washington: it was a step toward a final
resolution, a tranquilization, of the pressure at home. He didn't know
what would bring it up, possibly a storm surpassing in violence all
that had preceded it; and then ... the open prospect of old age. Fanny
should not actually learn of the occurrence in New York, there must be
no mistake about that; she would act on the supposition that he had
been merely indulging in a more or less advanced dallying; but her
patience in that, he judged, was at an end. Well, he could ultimately,
in all sincerity, agree with her there. Not too soon, of course, for
she was at present deeply suspicious of such protestations; he would
maintain for a short while longer an appearance of annoyance, his old
successful indignations at her minor charges, and then let her see that
she had nothing left to combat from that quarter.
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