hiefly concerned
are conducting in the most approved manner; if she had one of her own, I
suppose this would be her style--her idea of how the thing should be
done.[1] It is not mine, however; far from it. Shall I sit passive, and
see the clouds of care growing heavier about the wife of my bosom, and
the furrows deepening in that once marble brow? She looks two years
older than she did two months ago, and she owns it. I have three lovely
children: how brief a space it is since they played in the abandonment
of infant glee! And now their young existence, too, is darkened. Herbert
no longer slides down the banisters, with his former recklessness, but
sits and looks wistfully at Cousin Clarice. The change involves a saving
in lint and arnica, but a loss of muscular development. You see, we are
all of the sympathetic--which is the expensive--temperament: we have not
sense enough to be content each with his or her own personal affairs,
and let the others arrange their private funerals at their own charge.
There is more truth than I thought in part of what I told Hartman, that
night on the boat.

This thing must stop. I will have to ask the Princess if she wants our
humble abode to be a house of mourning much longer. We might accommodate
her in that respect for another month or two, but not permanently.
Lovers are so selfish: they don't care if they upset all your domestic
arrangements, and spoil your harmonies with the discord of their sweet
bells jangled. It ought not to be encouraged, nor yet allowed.

[Footnote 1: I was wholly mistaken in this, as will appear by the next
chapter. _R. T._]

XIX.

CONSPIRACY.

The summer has not done for any of us what it ought; quite the reverse.
Even I am not in my usual form, if Mabel and Jane are right. They had
let me alone for some time: last night they attacked me together--a
preconcerted movement, obviously.

"Robert, you are pale, almost haggard. You need a change."

"Why," said I, "I've just had a change--or rather several of them. We've
been back only three weeks."

"You need mountain air: the sea does not agree with you. And Newport is
not what it used to be."

"It's a good deal more so, if you mean that; but I don't know that its
increased muchness has damaged my health to any great extent."

"You prefer small, remote places, and their way of life; you know you
do. They are more of a change from town. You bought the house at Newport
for our sakes. I have of