ay the table with his foot.

"Sympathy is so near to pity!" said she. "If you pity me, cripple as
I am, I shall spurn you from me."

"Oh, Madeline, I will only love you," and again he caught her hand
and devoured it with kisses. Now she did not draw it from him, but
sat there as he kissed it, looking at him with her great eyes, just
as a great spider would look at a great fly that was quite securely
caught.

"Suppose Signor Neroni were to come to Barchester," said she. "Would
you make his acquaintance?"

"Signor Neroni!" said he.

"Would you introduce him to the bishop, and Mrs. Proudie, and the
young ladies?" said she, again having recourse to that horrid
quizzing voice which Mr. Slope so particularly hated.

"Why do you ask such a question?" said he.

"Because it is necessary that you should know that there is a Signor
Neroni. I think you had forgotten it."

"If I thought that you retained for that wretch one particle of
the love of which he was never worthy, I would die before I would
distract you by telling you what I feel. No! Were your husband the
master of your heart, I might perhaps love you, but you should never
know it."

"My heart again! How you talk. And you consider then that if a
husband be not master of his wife's heart, he has no right to her
fealty; if a wife ceases to love, she may cease to be true. Is
that your doctrine on this matter, as a minister of the Church of
England?"

Mr. Slope tried hard within himself to cast off the pollution with
which he felt that he was defiling his soul. He strove to tear
himself away from the noxious siren that had bewitched him. But he
could not do it. He could not be again heart free. He had looked
for rapturous joy in loving this lovely creature, and he already
found that he met with little but disappointment and self-rebuke. He
had come across the fruit of the Dead Sea, so sweet and delicious to
the eye, so bitter and nauseous to the taste. He had put the apple
to his mouth, and it had turned to ashes between his teeth. Yet he
could not tear himself away. He knew, he could not but know, that
she jeered at him, ridiculed his love, and insulted the weakness
of his religion. But she half-permitted his adoration, and that
half-permission added such fuel to his fire that all the fountain of
his piety could not quench it. He began to feel savage, irritated,
and revengeful. He meditated some severity of speech, some taunt
that should cut her, as her taunts