he began, slowly, "when I heard that Laura Magot's husband had
failed, as I knew that Lucia Darro's husband had once been jilted by
Laura Magot because he failed, I could not help wondering--now, Lucia
dear, how could I help wondering?--I wondered how Lucia Darro would feel.
Because--because--"

He made a full stop, and smiled.

"Because what?" asked his wife.

He lingered, and smiled.

"Because what?" persisted his wife, with mock gravity.

"Because Lucia Darro was a woman, and--well! I'll make a clean breast of
it--and because, although a man and woman love each other as long and
dearly as Lucia Darro and her husband have and do, there is still
something in the woman that the man can not quite understand, and upon
which he is forever experimenting. So I was curious to hear, or rather to
see and feel, what your thoughts were; and, at the moment I spoke, I
thought I saw them, and I was surprised."

"Exactly, Sir; and that surprise ought to have shown you that I was no
saint. Listen again, Sir. Lucia Darro's husband was never jilted by Laura
Magot, for the impetuous and ambitious young man who was engaged to that
lady is an entirely different person from my husband. Do you hear, Sir?"

"Precisely; and who made him so entirely different?"

"Hush, Sir! I've no time to hear such folly. I, too, am going to make a
clean breast of it, and confess that there was the least little sense
of--of--of--well, justice, in my mind, when I thought that Laura Magot
who jilted you, who were so unfortunate, and with whom she might have
been so happy--"

Gerald Bennet dissented, with smiles and shaking head.

"Hush, Sir! Any woman might have been. That she should have led such a
life with Boniface Newt, and have seen him ruined after all. Poor soul!
poor soul!"

"Which?" asked her husband.

"Both--both, Sir. I pity them both from my heart."

"Thou womanest of women!" retorted her husband. "Art thou, therefore, no
saint because thou pitiest them?"

"No, no; but because it was not an unmixed pity."

"At any rate, it is an unmixed goodness," said her husband.

The restless glance, the glimmering uncertainty, had faded from his eyes.
He sat quietly on the sofa, swinging his foot, and with his head bent a
little to one side over the limp cravat.

"Gerald," said his wife, "let us go out, and walk in the moonlight too."

CHAPTER LXX.

THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE PEOPLE.

In a few moments they were sauntering along the