She carried her thwarted
ardours into housework, she washed floors with her empty heart. If she
could not win the love of one with love, she must dominate all by her
temper. Hasty, wordy, and wrathful, she had a drawn quarrel with most
of her neighbours, and with the others not much more than armed
neutrality. The grieve's wife had been "sneisty"; the sister of the
gardener who kept house for him had shown herself "upsitten"; and she
wrote to Lord Hermiston about once a year demanding the discharge of the
offenders, and justifying the demand by much wealth of detail. For it
must not be supposed that the quarrel rested with the wife and did not
take in the husband also - or with the gardener's sister, and did not
speedily include the gardener himself. As the upshot of all this petty
quarrelling and intemperate speech, she was practically excluded (like a
lightkeeper on his tower) from the comforts of human association; except
with her own indoor drudge, who, being but a lassie and entirely at her
mercy, must submit to the shifty weather of "the mistress's" moods
without complaint, and be willing to take buffets or caresses according
to the temper of the hour.
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