in-law
sail with him?"

"They all return together,--except Nora."

"Who remains to comfort you? I hope you may be comforted;--that is
all. Don't be too particular. Let her choose her own friends, and go
her own gait, and have her own way, and do you be blind and deaf and
dumb and properly submissive; and it may be that she'll give you your
breakfast and dinner in your own house,--so long as your hours don't
interfere with her pleasures. If she should even urge you beside
yourself by her vanity, folly, and disobedience,--so that at last you
are driven to express your feeling,--no doubt she will come to you
after a while and tell you with the sweetest condescension that she
forgives you. When she has been out of your house for a twelvemonth
or more, she will offer to come back to you, and to forget
everything,--on condition that you will do exactly as she bids you
for the future."

This attempt at satire, so fatuous, so plain, so false, together
with the would-be jaunty manner of the speaker, who, however, failed
repeatedly in his utterances from sheer physical exhaustion, was
excessively painful to Stanbury. What can one do at any time with a
madman? "I mentioned my marriage," said he, "to prove my right to
have an additional interest in your wife's happiness."

"You are quite welcome, whether you marry the other one or
not;--welcome to take any interest you please. I have got beyond all
that, Stanbury;--yes, by Jove, a long way beyond all that."

"You have not got beyond loving your wife, and your child,
Trevelyan?"

"Upon my word, yes;--I think I have. There may be a grain of weakness
left, you know. But what have you to do with my love for my wife?"

"I was thinking more just now of her love for you. There she is at
Siena. You cannot mean that she should remain there?"

"Certainly not. What the deuce is there to keep her there?"

"Come with her then to England."

"Why should I go to England with her? Because you bid me, or because
she wishes it,--or simply because England is the most damnable,
puritanical, God-forgotten, and stupid country on the face of the
globe? I know no other reason for going to England. Will you take a
glass of wine, Stanbury?" Hugh declined the offer. "You will excuse
me," continued Trevelyan; "I always take a glass of wine at this
hour." Then he rose from his chair, and helped himself from a
cupboard that was near at hand. Stanbury, watching him as he filled
his glass, could see