Louy,' said Andrew.

'Oh, my mouth!--that I keep for, my chosen,' was answered.

'Gad, you make a fellow almost wish--' Andrew's fingers worked over his
poll, and then the spectre of righteous wrath flashed on him--naughty
little man that he was! He knew himself naughty, for it was the only time
since his marriage that he had ever been sorry to see his wife. This is a
comedy, and I must not preach lessons of life here: but I am obliged to
remark that the husband must be proof, the sister-in-law perfect, where
arrangements exist that keep them under one roof. She may be so like his
wife! Or, from the knowledge she has of his circumstances, she may talk
to him almost as his wife. He may forget that she is not his wife! And
then again, the small beginnings, which are in reality the mighty
barriers, are so easily slid over. But what is the use of telling this to
a pure generation? My constant error is in supposing that I write for the
wicked people who begat us.

Note, however, the difference between the woman and the man! Shame
confessed Andrew's naughtiness; he sniggered pitiably: whereas the
Countess jumped up, and pointing at him, asked her sister what she
thought of that. Her next sentence, coolly delivered, related to some
millinery matter. If this was not innocence, what is?

Nevertheless, I must here state that the scene related, innocent as it
was, and, as one would naturally imagine, of puny consequence, if any,
did no less a thing than, subsequently, to precipitate the Protestant
Countess de Saldar into the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church. A little
bit of play!

It seems barely just. But if, as I have heard, a lady has trod on a
pebble and broken her nose, tremendous results like these warn us to be
careful how we walk. As for play, it was never intended that we should
play with flesh and blood.

And, oh, be charitable, matrons of Britain! See here, Andrew Cogglesby,
who loved his wife as his very soul, and who almost disliked her sister;
in ten minutes the latter had set his head spinning! The whole of the day
he went about the house meditating frantically on the possibility of his
Harriet demanding a divorce.

She was not the sort of woman to do that. But one thing she resolved to
do; and it was, to go to Lymport with Louisa, and having once got her out
of her dwelling-place, never to allow her to enter it, wherever it might
be, in the light of a resident again. Whether anything but the menace of
a