. It seems that any blackguard has a right to publish
any lies that he likes about any one in any of the newspapers, and
that nobody can do anything to protect himself! Sometimes I have
thought that it would drive me mad!"

But he again perceived that he was getting out of the right course in
thus dwelling upon his own injuries. He had come there to alleviate
her misfortunes, not to talk about his own.

"It is no good, however, talking about all that; is it, Margaret?"

"It will cease now, will it not?"

"I cannot say. I fear not. Whichever way I turn, they abuse me for
what I do. What business is it of theirs?"

"You mean their absurd story--calling you a lion."

"Don't talk of it, Margaret."

Then Margaret was again silent. She by no means wished to talk of the
story, if he would only leave it alone.

"And now about you."

Then he came and sat beside her, and she put her hand back behind
the cushion on the sofa so as to save herself from trembling in his
presence. She need not have cared much, for, let her tremble ever so
much, he had then no capacity for perceiving it.

"Come, Margaret; I want to do what is best for us both. How shall it
be?"

"John, you have children, and you should do what is best for them."

Then there was a pause again, and when he spoke after a while, he was
looking down at the floor and poking among the pattern on the carpet
with his stick.

"Margaret, when I first asked you to marry me, you refused me."

"I did," said she; "and then all the property was mine."

"But afterwards you said you would have me."

"Yes; and when you asked me the second time I had nothing. I know all
that."

"I thought nothing about the money then. I mean that I never thought
you refused me because you were rich and took me because you were
poor. I was not at all unhappy about that when we were walking round
the shrubbery. But when I thought you had cared for that man--"

"I had never cared for him," said Margaret, withdrawing her hand from
behind the pillow in her energy, and fearing no longer that she might
tremble. "I had never cared for him. He is a false man, and told
untruths to my aunt."

"Yes, he is, a liar,--a damnable liar. That is true at any rate."

"He is beneath your notice, John, and beneath mine. I will not speak
of him."

Sir John, however, had an idea that when he felt the wasp's venom
through all his blood, the wasp could not be altogether beneath his
notice.

"The quest