bber,--who well know how to be masterful
when their time for being masterful has come,--is fatiguing enough.
But he had another task to perform before he went to bed, which he
would fain have kept unperformed were it possible to do so. He had
written to a third friend to make an appointment for the evening,
and this appointment he was bound to keep. He would very much rather
have stayed at his club and played billiards with the navy captain,
even though he might again have lost his shillings. The third friend
was that Mrs. Morton to whom Lord Altringham had once alluded.
"I supposed that it was coming," said Mrs. Morton, when she had
listened, without letting a word fall from her own lips, to the long
rambling story which Cousin George told her,--a rambling story in
which there were many lies, but in which there was the essential
truth, that Cousin George intended, if other things could be made to
fit, to marry his cousin Emily Hotspur. Mrs. Morton was a woman who
had been handsome,--dark, thin, with great brown eyes and thin lips
and a long well-formed nose; she was in truth three years younger
than George Hotspur, but she looked to be older. She was a clever
woman and well read too, and in every respect superior to the man
whom she had condescended to love. She earned her bread by her
profession as an actress, and had done so since her earliest years.
What story there may be of a Mr. Morton who had years ago married,
and ill-used, and deserted her, need not here be told. Her strongest
passion at this moment was love for the cold-blooded reprobate who
had now come to tell her of his intended marriage. She had indeed
loved George Hotspur, and George had been sufficiently attached to
her to condescend to take aid from her earnings.

"I supposed that it was coming," she said in a low voice when he
brought to an end the rambling story which she had allowed him to
tell without a word of interruption.

"What is a fellow to do?" said George.

"Is she handsome?"

George thought that he might mitigate the pain by making little of
his cousin. "Well, no, not particularly. She looks like a lady."

"And I suppose I don't." For a moment there was a virulence in this
which made poor George almost gasp. This woman was patient to a
marvel, long-bearing, affectionate, imbued with that conviction
so common to woman and the cause of so much delight to men,--that
ill-usage and suffering are intended for woman; but George knew that
s