k that I could say a word against you,
even to a friend?"

"Why not?"

"I never did. I never could. If my anger were at the hottest I would
not confess to a human being that you were not perfect,--except to
yourself."

"Oh, thank you! If you were to scold me vicariously I should feel it
less."

"Do not joke with me now, for I am so much in earnest! And if I could
not consent that your conduct should be called in question even by a
friend, do you suppose it possible that I could contrive an escape
from public censure by laying the blame publicly on you?"

"Stick to the truth;--that's what you always say."

"I certainly shall stick to the truth. A man and his wife are one.
For what she does he is responsible."

"They couldn't hang you, you know, because I committed a murder."

"I should be willing that they should do so. No;--if I pay this money
I shall take the consequences. I shall not do it in any way under the
rose. But I wish you would remember--"

"Remember what? I know I shall never forget all this trouble about
that dirty little town, which I never will enter again as long as I
live."

"I wish you would think that in all that you do you are dealing with
my feelings, with my heartstrings, with my reputation. You cannot
divide yourself from me; nor, for the value of it all, would I wish
that such division were possible. You say that I am thin-skinned."

"Certainly you are. What people call a delicate
organisation,--whereas I am rough and thick and monstrously
commonplace."

"Then should you too be thin-skinned for my sake."

"I wish I could make you thick-skinned for your own. It's the only
way to be decently comfortable in such a coarse, rough-and-tumble
world as this is."

"Let us both do our best," he said, now putting his arm round her and
kissing her. "I think I shall send the man his money at once. It is
the least of two evils. And now let there never be a word more about
it between us."

Then he left her and went back,--not to the study in which he was
wont, when at Matching, to work with his private Secretary,--but
to a small inner closet of his own, in which many a bitter moment
was spent while he thought over that abortive system of decimal
coinage by which he had once hoped to make himself one of the great
benefactors of his nation, revolving in his mind the troubles which
his wife brought upon him, and regretting the golden inanity of the
coronet which in the very prime of life had