"
She was silenced, and cast down her eyes waiting for what he might
choose to say next.
"The situation," he continued, after a pause, "is merely this. I
haven't the cleverness properly to manage being in debt. I don't know
how those notes are to be paid Saturday, and have been given to
understand that there are reasons, doubtless judicious, but extremely
inconvenient, why they will not be renewed."
His manner was as calm as ever, but there was a growing hardness in his
tone and a cruel tightening of his lips. His restraint had much of the
calmness of despair. His was a nature which always outran actualities
with imagined possibilities, and thus found in even the fullest joy a
sense of loss and failure; while in misfortune, it magnified all evils
until it was overwhelmed with the burden of their weight. He suffered
the more acutely because he endured not only the sting of the present
evil, but of all those which he foresaw might follow in its wake. He
felt at this moment a growing necessity to find some one against whom
he might logically turn his anger; and while he was firmly determined
not to vent his displeasure upon his wife, his attitude toward her
became constantly more stern.
"If Uncle Peter were at home," Edith began, after a pause, "he might"--
"He might not," interrupted Arthur, roughly. "In any case he has taken
the light of his countenance abroad, so he's out of the question.
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