we shall be able to do, by-and-by, to make both ends
meet. We are neither of us getting younger. These things are serious
cares, and we have to bear them. Why should you add to these an
imaginary trouble, a torment that has no existence, save in your own
perverse mind? If you could but know my low estimate of the women to
whom I am civil! I like society: and to get on in society a man must
make himself agreeable to influential women. It is the women who have
the reins in the social race, and by-and-by, if I should go into
Parliament----"

"Parliament!" cried his wife affrightedly. "You want to become a Member
of Parliament, and to be out at all hours of the night! Our home-life
would be altogether destroyed then."

"My dear Pamela, if you take such pains to make our home-life
miserable, it will be hardly worth preserving," retorted the Captain.

"Conrad, I am going to ask you a question--a very solemn question."

"You alarm me."

"Long ago--before we were married--when Violet was arguing with me
against our marriage--you know how vehemently she opposed it--"

"Perfectly. Go on."

"She told me that you had proposed to her before you proposed to me.
Oh, Conrad, could that be true?"

The heart-rending tone in which the question was asked, the pathetic
look that accompanied it, convinced Captain Winstanley that, if he
valued his domestic peace, he must perjure himself.

"It had no more foundation than many other assertions of that young
lady's," he said. "I may have paid her compliments, and praised her
beauty; but how could I think of her for a wife, when you were by? Your
soft confiding nature conquered me before I knew that I was hit."

He got up and went over to his wife and kissed her kindly enough,
feeling sorry for her as he might have done for a wayward child that
weeps it scarce knows wherefore, oppressed by a vague sense of
affliction.

"Let us try to be happy together, Pamela," he pleaded, with a sigh,
"life is weary work at best."

"That means that you are not happy, Conrad."

"My love, I am as happy as you will let me be."

"Have I ever opposed you in anything?"

"No, dear; but lately you have indulged in covert upbraidings that have
plagued me sorely. Let us have no more of them. As for your
daughter"--his face darkened at the mention of that name--"understand
at once and for ever that she and I can never inhabit the same house.
If she comes, I go. If you cannot live without her you must le