’What more do you want to know?  You can know all for the asking.  Did I ever refuse to answer you?  As to my knowledge of you and your affairs, if I think it sufficient, need you complain?  What is it that you want to know?  Ask anything and I will tell you.  Is it about my money?  You knew when you gave me your word that I had next to none.  Now I have ample means of my own.  You knew that I was a widow.  What more?  If you wish to hear of the wretch that was my husband, I will deluge you with stories.  I should have thought that a man who loved would not have cared to hear much of one—­who perhaps was loved once.’

He knew...