ould feel that!"

"But you know that it is true."

"No, dearest, that is the pinch. I do not know that it is true. I
often feel that it is just a bit not true. It was a one-sided
bargain, in which one of the parties had eyes open and got all
the advantage; and that party was I."

"I will not have you so conceited," she said, patting his hand
once or twice, and looking more bravely than ever up into his
eyes. "Why should you think you were so much the cleverer of the
two as to get all the good out of our bargain? I am not going to
allow that you were so much the more quick-witted and
clear-sighted. Women are said to be as quick-witted as men.
Perhaps it is not I who have been outwitted after all."

"Look at the cost, Mary. Think of what you will have to give up.
You cannot reckon it up yet."

"What! are you going back to the riding-horses and lady's maid
again? I thought I had convinced you on those points."

"They are only a very small part of the price. You have left a
home where everybody loved you. You knew it; you were sure of it.
You had felt their love ever since you could remember anything."

"Yes, dear, and I feel it still. They will be all just as fond of
me at home, though I am your wife."

"At home! It is no longer your home."

"No, I have a home of my own now. A new home, with new love there
to live on; and an old home, with the old love to think of."

"A new home instead of an old one, a poor home instead of a rich
one--a home where the cry of the sorrow and suffering of the
world will reach you, for one in which you had--"

"In which I had not you, dear. There now, that was my purchase. I
set my mind on having you--buying you, as that is your word. I
have paid my price, and got my bargain, and--you know, I was
always an oddity, and rather willful, am content with it."

"Yes, Mary, you have bought me, and you little know, dearest,
what you have bought. I can scarcely bear my own selfishness at
times when I think of what your life might have been had I left
you alone, and what it must be with me."

"And what might it have been, dear?"

"Why, you might have married some man with plenty of money, who
could have given you everything to which you have been used."

"I shall begin to think that you believe in luxuries, after all,
if you go on making so much of them. You must not go on preaching
one thing and practicing another. I am a convert to your
preaching, and believe in the misery of mult