way off that, and may spoil herself in the process; but she
has a certain power. Her donkey obstinacy in refusing compliance, and her
pursuit of 'my husband,' and ability to drench him with ridicule, do not
exhibit the ordinary young female. She stamps her impression on the
people she meets. Her husband is shaken to confess it likewise, despite a
disagreement between them.

He has owned he is her husband: he has not disavowed the consequence.
That fellow, Gower Woodseer, might accuse the husband of virtually lying,
if he by his conduct implied her distastefulness or worse. By heaven! as
felon a deed as could be done. Argue the case anyhow, it should be
undone. Let her but cease to madden. For whatever the rawness of the
woman, she has qualities; and experience of the facile loves of London
very sharply defines her qualities. Think of her as raw, she has the gift
of rareness: forget the donkey obstinacy, her character grasps. In the
grasp of her character, one inclines, and her husband inclines, to become
her advocate. She has only to discontinue maddening.

The wealthy young noble prized any form of rareness wherever it was
visible, having no thought of the purchase of it, except with worship. He
could listen pleased to the talk of a Methodist minister sewing
bootleather. He picked up a roadside tramp and made a friend of him, and
valued the fellow's honesty, submitted to his lectures, pardoned his
insolence. The sight of Carinthia's narrow bedroom and strip of bed over
Sarah Winch's Whitechapel shop had gone a step to drown the bobbing
Whitechapel Countess. At least, he had not been hunted by that gaunt
chalk-quarry ghost since his peep into the room. Own it! she likewise has
things to forgive. Women nurse their larvae of ideas about fair dealing.
But observe the distinction: aid if women understood justice they would
be the first to proclaim, that when two are tied together, the one who
does the other serious injury is more naturally excused than the one
who-tenfold abhorrent if a woman!--calls up the grotesque to extinguish
both.

With this apology for himself, Lord Fleetwood grew tolerant of the person
honourably avowed as his wife. So; therefore, the barrier between him and
his thoughts of her was broken. The thoughts carrying red doses were
selected. Finally, the taste to meet her sprouted. If agreeable, she
could be wooed; if barely agreeable, tormented; if disagreeable, left as
before.

Although it was the