e
island. So get up and get dressed and be ready and willing to go with
his lordship when he sails by this afternoon's steamer."

"I can't," I said.

"You can't? You mean you won't?"

"Very well, Auntie, I won't."

At that Aunt Bridget stormed at me for several minutes, telling me that
if my stubborn determination not to leave the island with my husband
meant that I intended to return home she might inform me at once that I
was not wanted there and I need not come.

"I've enough on my hands in that house already, what with Betsy
unmarried, and your father doing nothing for her, and that nasty Nessy
MacLeod making up to him. You ungrateful minx! You are ruining
everything! After all I've done for you too! But no matter! If you
_will_ make your bed I shall take care that you lie on it."

With that, and the peak of her half-moon bonnet almost dancing over her
angry face, Aunt Bridget flounced out of my room.

Half an hour afterwards, when I went into the sitting-room, I found my
father's advocate, Mr. Curphy, waiting for me. He looked down at me with
an indulgent and significant smile, which brought the colour rushing
back to my face, put me to sit by his side, touched my arm with one of
his large white clammy hands, stroked his long brown beard with the
other, and then in the half-reproving tone which a Sunday-school teacher
might have used to a wayward child, he began to tell me what the
consequences would be if I persisted in my present conduct.

They would be serious. The law was very clear on marital rights. If a
wife refused to live with her husband, except on a plea of cruelty or
something equally plausible, he could apply to the court and compel her
to do so; and if she declined, if she removed herself from his abode, or
having removed, refused to return, the Court might punish her--it might
even imprison her.

"So you see, the man is the top dog in a case like this, my dear, and he
can compel the woman to obey him."

"Do you mean," I said, "that he can use force to compel her?"

"Reasonable force, yes. I think that's so. And quite right, too, when
you come to think of it. The woman has entered into a serious contract,
and it is the duty of the law to see that she fulfills the conditions of
it."

I remembered how little I had known of the conditions of the contract I
had entered into, but I was too heart-sick and ashamed to say anything
about that.

"Aw yes, that's so," said the advocate, "force, r