"You saw it then?" returned Helen. "I did not think you had been so
quick."

"I saw what I could not help taking for relief," said the curate, "when
the maid told her that her husband was not at home."

They said no more till they reached the rectory, where Helen followed
her husband to his study.

"He can't have turned tyrant already!" she said, resuming the subject of
Juliet's look. "But she's afraid of him."

"It did look like it," rejoined her husband. "Oh, Helen, what a hideous
thing fear of her husband must be for a woman, who has to spend not her
days only in his presence, but her nights by his side! I do wonder so
many women dare to be married. They would need all to have clean
consciences."

"Or no end of faith in their husbands," said Helen. "If ever I come to
be afraid of you, it will be because I have done something very wrong
indeed."

"Don't be too sure of that, Helen," returned Wingfold. "There are very
decent husbands as husbands go, who are yet unjust, exacting, selfish.
The most devoted of wives are sometimes afraid of the men they yet
consider the very models of husbands. It is a brutal shame that a woman
should feel afraid, or even uneasy, instead of safe, beside her
husband."

"You are always on the side of the women, Thomas," said his wife; "and I