"I... I... I am...," Elizabeth find it hard to tender her apology. She wasn't used to apologising to anyone.
"You are what?" Alfred asked when he saw how strangely his usual confident wife was acting.
"Are you ill and need me to accompany you to the hospital or did mum and dad asked us to visit them in the main mansion?" Alfred asked in a patient tone. The only time his wife initiates a conversation was during these two mentioned occasions or about business-related issues that is why his thoughts went in those directions.
"I am not sick and neither dad nor mum invited us to the main mansion...,"
"Then what is the problem, Liza? What are you finding so difficult to say?" Alfred asked? With the way she acted, he became anxious that something major was wrong for Elizabeth to have decided to talk to him.