Free A Bride from the Bush by E. W. Hornung

rational animal; and this one completely altered his attitude towards Gladys.
    If, hitherto, he had ridiculed her, delicately, to her face, and disparaged her—with less delicacy—behind her back, he had been merely pursuing a species of intellectual sport, without much malicious intent. He was not aware that he had ever made the poor thing uncomfortable. He had not inquired into that. He was only aware that he had more than once had his joke out of her, and enjoyed it, and felt pleased with himself. But his sentiment towards her was no longer so devoid of animosity. She had scored off him; he had felt it sufficiently at the moment; but he felt it much more when it had rankled a little. And he despised and detested himself for having been scored off, even without witnesses, by a creature so coarse and contemptible. He was too vain to satisfy himself with the comfortable, elastic, and deservedly popular principle that certain unpleasantnesses and certain unpleasant people are ‘beneath notice.’ Nobody was beneath Granville’s notice; he would have punished with his own boot the young blackguards of the gutter, could he have been sure of catching them, and equally sure of not being seen; and he punished Gladys in a fashion that precluded detection—even Gladys herself never knew that she was under the lash.
    On the contrary, she ceased to dislike her brother-in-law. He was become more polite to her than he had ever been before; more affable and friendly in every way. Quite suddenly, they were brother and sister together.
    â€˜How well those two get on!’ Lady Bligh would whisper to her husband, during the solemn game of bezique which was an institution of their quieter evenings; and, indeed, the Bride and her brother-in-law had taken to talking and laughing a good deal in the twilight by the open window. But, sooner or later, Granville was sure to come over to the card-table with Gladys’s latest story or saying, with which he would appear to be hugely amused: and the same he delighted to repeat in its original vernacular, and with its original slips of grammar, but with his own faultless accent—which emphasised those peculiarities, making Lady Bligh sigh sadly and Sir James look as though he did not hear. And Alfred was too well pleased that his wife had come to like Granville at last, to listen to what they were talking about; and the poor girl herself never once suspected the unkindness; far from it, indeed, for she liked Granville now.
    â€˜I thought he would never forgive me for giving him that bit of my mind the other day; but you see, Alfred, it did him good; and now I like him better than I ever thought possible in this world. He’s awfully good to me. And we take an interest in the same sort of things. Didn’t you hear how interested he was in Bella’s sweetheart at lunch to-day?’
    Alfred turned away from the fresh bright face that was raised to his. He could not repress a frown.
    â€˜I do wish you wouldn’t call the girl Bella,’ he said, with some irritation. ‘Her name’s Bunn. Why don’t you call her Bunn, dear? And nobody dreams of making talk about their maids’ affairs, let alone their maids’ young men, at the table. It’s not the custom—notin England.’
    A week ago he would not have remonstrated with her upon so small a matter; but the ice had been broken that morning in Richmond Park. And a week ago she would very likely have told him, laughingly, to hang his English customs; but now she looked both pained and puzzled, as she begged him to explain to her the harm in what she had said.
    â€˜Harm?’ said Alfred, more tenderly. ‘Well, there was no real harm in it—that’s the wrong word altogether—especially as we were by ourselves, without guests. Still, you know, the mother doesn’t want to hear all about her servants’ family affairs, and what her servants’ sweethearts are