s," broke in my mother. "You marry one you have
never seen before; you have nothing of how you call 'exultation,' point
des idees romantiques; you are delighted with all the little 'soins'
and attentions of your husband, who has, at least, one inestimable
merit,--he is never familiar."

"How charming!" said Rutledge, with mock seriousness.

"Is it not?" continued she, not detecting the covert irony of his tone;
"it is your intimite,--how you call it?"

"Intimacy."

"Oui," said she, smiling, but not trusting herself to repeat the word.
"C'est cela,--that destroys your happiness."

"Egad! I 'd as soon be a bachelor," broke in MacNaghten, "if I only
were to look at my wife with an opera-glass across the theatre, or be
permitted to kiss her kid glove on her birthday."

"What he say,--why you laugh?" cried my mother, who could not follow the
rapidity of his utterance.

"Mr. MacNaghten prefers homeliness to refinement," said Polly.

"Oui, you are right, my dear," added my mother; "it is more refined. And
then, instead of all that 'tracasserie' you have about your house, and
your servants, and the thousand little 'inconvenance de menage,'
you have one whom you consult on your toilette, your equipage, your
'coiffure,'--in fact, in all affairs of good taste. Voila Walter, par
exemple: he never derange me for a moment,--I hope I never ennuye him."

"Quite right,--perfectly right," said Polly, with a well-assumed
gravity.

"By Jove, that's only single harness work, after all," said MacNaghten;
"I'd rather risk a kick, now and then, and have another beside me to tug
at this same burden of daily life."

"I no understand you, you speak so fast. How droll you are, you Irish!
See there, the Lord Duke and my husband, how they shake hands as if they
did not meet before, and they walk together for the last half-hour."

"A most cordial embrace, indeed," said Polly, fixing her eyes on
Rutledge, who seemed far from being at ease under the inspection, while
MacNaghten, giving one hasty glance through the window, snatched up his
hat and left the room. He passed rapidly down the stairs, crossed the
hall, and was just leaving the house when my father met him.

"The very man I wanted, Dan," cried he; "come to my room with me for a
few minutes."

As they entered the room, my father turned the key in the door, and
said,--

"We must not be interrupted, for I want to have a little talk with you.
I have just parted with the Duke--"