When the dutiful husband arrived at the landing, he found his tender wife, standing near the boat, clasping her child’s hand in her own, and our friend was obliged to see that his jewels were safely seated in the boat.  After he had rowed the skiff out as far as Ulrica thought was proper, he with many misgivings threw out his line.

“How strange it is my dear Fabian, that every time you fish you sit still there on your seat like a perfect automaton!”

With this preamble, Mistress Ulrica opened the floodgates of her ill-humor, to which on occasions like the present especially she gave perfect freedom.

“An automaton, my dear!”

“A post, a perfect post.  You do not even turn your head; just as though the company of your wife and child was the most wearisome thing of your life.”

But dearest Ulrique Eugenie, I must keep watch for a bite.  If I turn around—­”

“You would not lose the sense of feeling if you should; but you hope, I suppose, that persons on the shore will think you master of the boat.  Simpleton!  What folly to think that!”

“Dear Ulrique Eugenie, shall I ask if you have spared my nephew your ill-humor that you may vent it on me.  It is my opinion—­”

“What is your opinion, sir?”

“O nothing further than that I am sufficiently burdened with your natural bad-temper already, without having it increased by the aid of another.”

“Burdened!—­ill-humor—­bad temper!—­is the man mad?  Do you thus speak to me, your wedded wife, who bears your stupid indifference; your want of tenderness and love with angelic forbearance?  O, this is too much!  It is shameful!  It is undeserved!”

“Now, now, Ulgenie, do not be so hasty.  You know how patient I am.”

“And what am I, then, to be married to such a musty husband?  Your wife is courted before your very eyes; you see nothing! you hear nothing!—­I could be unfaithful to you, and even then you would close your eyes.  O, fate!  O bitter life! such a husband can drive a wife to desperation, and from thence it is but one step to madness.”

“Who is again playing the gallant to you?”

And in this “again,” reposed an expression which displayed that such scenes were not new to him.  Mistress Ulrica, like other women, possessed her weak points, one of which was that if a gentleman happened to converse with her pleasantly, she immediately imagined that he was desperately in love with her.  But to her great sorrow, Mrs. Ulrica, although she possessed entire control over her husband’s actions, never could make an Othello of him.  Had Mr. Fabian but known her desire in this respect, he could have deprived his wife of her sceptre, and taken up the reins of matrimonial government himself.

A tyrannical husband would have been able to bend Mrs. Ulrica like a reed, and to have trodden her under his feet which she would willingly have kissed; but now Mr. Fabian kissed her feet, and therefore she crushed him to the dust, and although she did not merit the reproach that Desdemona received, it was, nevertheless, no fault of his.  But of what use would it have been even should she have merited it?  Othello was a fanciful creation which her husband of all men would have been least willing to personate.