e could live upon _that_?"

"Why not? I don't see how anyone could possibly desire anything better
to live upon."

"Just fancy Robinson Crusoe on it," says the Boodie, with a derisive
smile.

"I could fancy him very fat on it; I could also fancy him considering
himself in great luck when he found it, or discovered it. They always
discovered islands, didn't they? _I_ should like to live on just such an
island for an indefinite number of years."

"You are extremely silly," says Miss Beaufort, politely; "you know as
well as I do that it wouldn't keep you up."

"Well, not, perhaps, so strongly as a few other things," acknowledges
Mr. Browne, gracefully; "but I think it _would_ support me for all
that,--for a _time_, at least."

"Not for one minute. Why, you couldn't stand on it."

"A prolonged acquaintance with it _alone_ might make me totter, I
confess," says Mr. Browne. "But yet, if I had enough of it, I think I
_could_ stand on it very well."

"You could _not_," says the Boodie, indignant at being so continuously
contradicted on a point so clear. "If you had ten whole jellies--if you
had one as big as this house--you couldn't manage it."

"I really beg your pardon," protests Mr. Browne, with dignity. "It is my
belief that I _could_ manage it in time. I'm very fond of jelly."

"You would go right through it and come out at the other side," persists
the Boodie, nothing daunted.

"Like the Thames Tunnel. How nice!" says Dicky Browne, amiably.

"Well, you can't live on it _now_, anyway," says the Boodie, putting the
last bit of the jelly island into her small mouth.

"No, no, indeed," says Dicky, shaking his head with all the appearance
of one sunk in the very deepest dejection.

CHAPTER XXIII.

"I do perceive here a divided duty."--_Othello._

JEALOUSY is the keenest, the most selfish, the most poignant of all
sufferings. "It is," says Milton, "the injured lover's hell." This
monster having now seized upon Stephen, is holding him in a close
embrace and is swiftly crushing within him all hope and peace and joy.

To watch Dulce day after day in her cousin's society, to mark her great
eyes grow brighter when he comes, is now more than he can endure. To
find himself second where he had been first is intolerable to him, and a
shrinking feeling that warns him he is being watched and commented upon
by all the members of the Blount household, renders him at times half
mad with rage and wounded