it is
all the vaguest suspicion, so let us put it aside altogether now. Just
at present I am a great deal too happy to give as much as a thought to
unpleasant matters. We have to attend to the business of the hour, and
you have the two years of love of which I have been deprived to make up
for."

"I am very, very glad, Cuthbert, that I was not in love with you then."

"Why?"

"Because we should have started all wrong. I don't think I should ever
have come to look up to you and honor you as I do now. I should never
have been cured of my silly ideas, and might even have thought that I
had made some sort of sacrifice in giving up my plans. Besides, then you
were what people call a good match, and now no one can think that it is
not for love only."

"Well, at any rate, Mary, we shall have between us enough to keep us out
of the workhouse even if I turn out an absolute failure."

"You know you won't do that."

"I hope not, but at any rate one is liable to illness, to loss of
sight, and all sorts of other things, and as we have between us four
hundred a year we can manage very comfortably, even if I come to an end
of my ardor for work and take to idleness again."

"I am not afraid of that," she smiled, "after painting those two
pictures, you could not stop painting. I don't think when anyone can do
good work of any sort, he can get tired of it, especially when the work
is art. My only fear is that I shan't get my fair share of your time."

"Well, if I see you getting jealous, Mary, I have the means of reducing
you to silence by a word."

"Have you, indeed? Will you please tell me what word is that?"

"I shall just say, Minette!"

Mary's color flamed up instantly.

"If you do, sir; if you do----" and then stopped.

"Something terrible will come of it, eh. Well, it was not fair."

"It was quite fair, Cuthbert. It will always be a painful recollection
to me, and I hope a lesson too."

"It will not be a painful recollection to me," he laughed. "I think I
owe Minette a debt of gratitude. Now, what do you say to taking a drive,
Mary? Horse-flesh has gone down five hundred per cent. in the market in
the last three days, and I was able to get a fiacre on quite reasonable
terms."

"Is it waiting here still? How extravagant, Cuthbert, it must have been
here nearly an hour."

"I should say I have been here over two hours and a quarter according to
that clock."

"Dear me, what will Madame Michaud think? Shall I te