ings if she can abide being away.
And you trusting to time, why it's like trusting not to catch cold out of
your natural clothes." There was no shaking Lucy's firmness.

Richard gave it up. He began to think that the life lying behind him was
the life of a fool. What had he done in it? He had burnt a rick and got
married! He associated the two acts of his existence. Where was the hero
he was to have carved out of Tom Bakewell!--a wretch he had taught to lie
and chicane: and for what? Great heavens! how ignoble did a flash from
the light of his aspirations make his marriage appear! The young man
sought amusement. He allowed his aunt to drag him into society, and sick
of that he made late evening calls on Mrs. Mount, oblivious of the
purpose he had in visiting her at all. Her man-like conversation, which
he took for honesty, was a refreshing change on fair lips.

"Call me Bella: I'll call you Dick," said she. And it came to be Bella
and Dick between them. No mention of Bella occurred in Richard's letters
to Lucy.

Mrs. Mount spoke quite openly of herself. "I pretend to be no better than
I am," she said, "and I know I'm no worse than many a woman who holds her
head high." To back this she told him stories of blooming dames of good
repute, and poured a little social sewerage into his ears.

Also she understood him. "What you want, my dear Dick, is something to
do. You went and got married like a--hum!--friends must be respectful. Go
into the Army. Try the turf. I can put you up to a trick or two--friends
should make themselves useful."

She told him what she liked in him. "You're the only man I was ever alone
with who don't talk to me of love and make me feel sick. I hate men who
can't speak to a woman sensibly.--Just wait a minute." She left him and
presently returned with, "Ah, Dick! old fellow! how are you?"--arrayed
like a cavalier, one arm stuck in her side, her hat jauntily cocked, and
a pretty oath on her lips to give reality to the costume. "What do you
think of me? Wasn't it a shame to make a woman of me when I was born to
be a man?"

"I don't know that," said Richard, for the contrast in her attire to
those shooting eyes and lips, aired her sex bewitchingly.

"What! you think I don't do it well?"

"Charming! but I can't forget..."

"Now that is too bad!" she pouted.

Then she proposed that they should go out into the midnight streets
arm-in-arm, and out they went and had great fits of laughter at her
i