ect. It loosened only her tongue,
but never her eyes. Her arm, I think, never trembled and her hand never
lingered. The general was always safe, and happy perhaps in his solitary
safety.

It so happened that we had unfortunately among us two artists who had
quarrelled with their wives. O'Brien, whom I have before mentioned, was
one of them. In his case I believe him to have been almost as free from
blame as a man can be whose marriage was in itself a fault. However, he
had a wife in Ireland some ten years older than himself, and though he
might sometimes almost forget the fact, his friends and neighbours were
well aware of it. In the other case the whole fault probably was with
the husband. He was an ill-tempered, bad-hearted man, clever enough,
but without principle; and he was continually guilty of the great sin
of speaking evil of the woman whose name he should have been anxious to
protect. In both cases our friend, Mrs. Talboys, took a warm interest,
and in each of them she sympathised with the present husband against the
absent wife.

Of the consolation which she offered in the latter instance we used to
hear something from Mackinnon. He would repeat to his wife and to me
and my wife the conversations which she had with him. "Poor Brown!" she
would say; "I pity him with my very heart's blood."

"You are aware that he has comforted himself in his desolation,"
Mackinnon replied.

"I know very well to what you allude. I think I may say that I
am conversant with all the circumstances of this heart-blighting
sacrifice." Mrs. Talboys was apt to boast of the thorough confidence
reposed in her by all those in whom she took an interest. "Yes, he has
sought such comfort in another love as the hard cruel world would allow
him."

"Or perhaps something more than that," said Mackinnon. "He has a family
here in Rome, you know; two little babies."

"I know it, I know it," she said; "cherub angels!" And as she spoke she
looked up into the ugly face of Marcus Aurelius, for they were standing
at the moment under the figure of the great horseman on the Campidoglio.
"I have seen them, and they are children of innocence. If all the blood
of all the Howards ran in their veins it could not make their birth more
noble!"

"Not if the father and mother of all the Howards had never been
married," said Mackinnon.

"What! that from you, Mr. Mackinnon!" said Mrs. Talboys, turning her
back with energy upon the equestrian statue and loo