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 chamber-maid, 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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