her all over very carefully to find if she had not some bones broken.  But no, he could find none.  Indeed it was some hours before this poor silly gentleman began to suspect the truth, which was that his vixen had practised a deception upon him, and all the time he was bemoaning his loss in such heartrending terms, she was only shamming death to run away directly she was able.  If it had not been that the yard gates were shut, which was a mere chance, she had got her liberty by that trick.  And that this was only a trick of hers to sham dead was plain when he had thought it over.  Indeed it is an old and time-honoured trick of the fox.  It is in Aesop and a hundred other writers have confirmed it since.  But so thoroughly had he been deceived by her, that at first he was as much overcome with joy at his wife still being alive, as he had been with grief a little while before, thinking her dead.

He took her in his arms, hugging her to him and thanking God a dozen times for her preservation.  But his kissing and fondling her had very little effect now, for she did not answer him by licking or soft looks, but stayed huddled up and sullen, with her hair bristling on her neck and her ears laid back every time he touched her.  At first he thought this might be because he had touched some broken bone or tender place where she had been hurt, but at last the truth came to him.

Thus he was again to suffer, and though the pain of knowing her treachery to him was nothing to the grief of losing her, yet it was more insidious and lasting.  At first, from a mere nothing, this pain grew gradually until it was a torture to him.  If he had been one of your stock ordinary husbands, such a one who by experience has learnt never to enquire too closely into his wife’s doings, her comings or goings, and never to ask her, “How she has spent the day?” for fear he should be made the more of a fool, had Mr. Tebrick been such a one he had been luckier, and his pain would have been almost nothing.  But you must consider that he had never been deceived once by his wife in the course of their married life.  No, she had never told him as much as one white lie, but had always been frank, open and ingenuous as if she and her husband were not husband and wife, or indeed of opposite sexes.  Yet we must rate him as very foolish, that living thus with a fox, which beast has the same reputation for deceitfulness, craft and cunning, in all countries, all ages, and amongst all races of mankind, he should expect this fox to be as candid and honest with him in all things as the country girl he had married.

His wife’s sullenness and bad temper continued that day, for she cowered away from him and hid under the sofa, nor could he persuade her to come out from there.  Even when it was her dinner time she stayed, refusing resolutely to be tempted out with food, and lying so quiet that he heard nothing from her for hours.  At night he carried her up to the bedroom, but she was still sullen and refused to eat a morsel, though she drank a little water during the night, when she fancied he was asleep.