how many weeks?--months?'

'Years.'

'Married years! And if you've been married years, where were you married?
Not in a church. That woman's no church-bride.'

'There are some clever women made idiots of by their trullish tempers.'

'Abuse away. I've asked you where you were married, Rowsley.'

'Go to Madrid. Go to the Embassy. Apply to the chaplain.'

'Married in Madrid! Who's ever married in Madrid! You flung her a yellow
handkerchief, and she tied it round her neck--that 's your ceremony! Now
you tell me you've been married years; and she's a young woman; you fetch
her over from Madrid, set her in a place where those Morsfields and other
fungi-fellows grow, and she has to think herself lucky to be received by
a Lady Staines and a Mrs. Lawrence Finchley, and she the talk of the
town, refused at Court, for all an honourable-enough old woman
countenanced her in pity; and I 'm asked to believe she was my brother's
wife, sister-in-law of mine, all the while! I won't.'

Lady Charlotte dilated on it for a length of time, merely to show she
declined to believe it; pouring Morsfield over him and the talk of the
town, the gypsy caught in Spain--now to be foisted on her as her
sister-in-law! She could fancy she produced an effect.

She did indeed unveil to him a portion of the sufferings his Aminta had
undergone; as visibly, too, the good argumentative reasons for his
previous avoidance of the deadly, dismal wrangle here forced on him. A
truly dismal, profitless wrangle! But the finish of it would be the
beginning of some solace to his Aminta.

The finish of it must be to-morrow. He refrained from saying so, and
simply appointed to-morrow for the resumption of the wrestle, departing
in his invincible coat of patience: which one has to wear when dealing
with a woman like Charlotte, he informed Mr. Eglett, on his way out at a
later hour than on the foregone day. Mr. Eglett was of his opinion, that
an introduction of lawyers into a family dispute was 'rats in the
pantry'; and he would have joined him in his gloomy laugh, if the thought
of Charlotte in a contention had not been so serious a matter. She might
be beaten; she could not be brought to yield.

She retired to her bedroom, and laid herself flat on her bed, immoveable,
till her maid undressed her for the night. A cup of broth and strip of
toast formed her sole nourishment. As for her doctor's possible
reproaches, the symptoms might crowd and do their worst; she fo