Read "The Californians" by Gertrude Atherton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Don Roberto and Mr. Polk took no part in these festivities; Mrs. Yorba and Magdalena took less and less; the picture made by Don Roberto in his shirt-sleeves, manipulating a hose as the char-a-banc drove off, finally forbade his wife to riot while her husband toiled. She was angry and resentful; but she was a woman of stern principles, and she had a certain measure of that sort of love for her husband which duty prompts in those who are without passion.
"I don't pretend to understand your father," she said to Magdalena. "The bees he gets in his bonnet are quite beyond me, but if he feels that way, he does, and that's the end of it; and he makes me feel uncomfortable all the time I am anywhere. I sha'n't go out again until he gets over this. You can go with somebody else."