The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (5.1895)

The Haseltons

By Hubert Crackanthorpe

I

She sat in a corner of a large London drawing-room, and the
two men stood before her—Hillier Haselton, her husband,
and George Swann, her husband’s cousin ; and, beyond them, the
mellow light of shaded candles, vague groupings of black coats,
white shirt-fronts, and gay-tinted dresses, and the noisy hum of
conversation.

The subject that the two men were discussing—and more
especially Swann’s blunt earnestness—stirred her, though through-
out it she had been unpleasantly conscious of a smallness, almost a
pettiness, in Hillier’s aspect.

u Well, but why not, my dear Swann ? Why not be unjust :
man’s been unjust to woman for so many years.”

Hillier let his voice fall listlessly, as if to rebuke the other’s
vehemence ; and to hint that he was tired of the topic, looked
round at his wife, noting at the same time that Swann was observ-
ing how he held her gaze in his meaningly. And the unexpected-
ness of his own attitude charmed him—his hot defence of an
absurd theory, obviously evoked by a lover-like desire to please her.
Others, whose admiration he could trust, would, he surmised, have

reckoned