elieved that the maintenance of her own dignity forbade it, she
would have openly rebuked him, and told him that he was not welcome in
her house. No treatment from her could, as she thought, be worse than he
had deserved from her. His first enmity had injured her, but she could
afford to laugh at his present anger. "It is hard to talk to you about
Hermy without what you are pleased to call a sneer. You simply wish to
rid yourself of her."

"I wish to do no such thing, and you have no right to say so."

"At any rate, you are ridding yourself of her society; and under those
circumstances, she likes to come to me, I shall be glad to receive her.
Our life together will not be very cheerful, but neither she nor I ought
to expect a cheerful life."

He rose from his chair now with a cloud of anger upon his brow. "I can
see how it is," said he; "because everything has not gone smooth with
yourself; you choose to resent it upon me. I might have expected that
you would not have forgotten in whose house you met Lord Ongar."

"No, Hugh, I forget nothing: neither when I met him, nor how I married
him, nor any of the events that have happened since. My memory,
unfortunately, is very good."

"I did all I could for you, and should have been safe from your
insolence."

"You should have continued to stay away from me, and you would have been
quite safe. But our quarrelling in this way is foolish. We can never be
friends, you and I, but we need not be open enemies. Your wife is my
sister, and I say again that, if she likes to come to me, I shall be
delighted to have her."

"My wife," said he, "will go to the house of no person who is insolent
to me." Then he took his hat and left the room without further word or
sign of greeting. In spite of his calculations and caution as to
money--in spite of his well-considered arrangements and the comfortable
provision for his future ease which he had proposed to himself; he was a
man who had not his temper so much under control as to enable him to
postpone his anger to his prudence. That little scheme for getting rid
of his wife was now at an end. He would never permit her to go to her
sister's house after the manner in which Julia had just treated him.

When he was gone, Lady Ongar walked about her own room smiling, and at
first was well pleased with herself. She had received Archie's overture
with decision, but at the same time with courtesy, for Archie was weak
and poor and powerless. But