my poor old nerves. When
Clara was given to you she was as well broke a girl as any in London."

Sir Barnes responded by a groan.

"She was as gentle and amenable to reason, as good-natured a girl as
could be; a little vacant and silly, but you men like dolls for your
wives; and now in three years you have utterly spoiled her. She is
restive, she is artful, she flies into rages, she fights you and beats
you. He! he! and that comes of your beating her!"

"I didn't come to hear this, ma'am," says Barnes, livid with rage

"You struck her, you know you did, Sir Barnes Newcome. She rushed over
to me last year on the night you did it, you know she did."

"Great God, ma'am! You know the provocation," screams Barnes.

"Provocation or not, I don't say. But from that moment she has beat you.
You fool, to write her a letter and ask her pardon. If I had been a man
I would rather have strangled my wife, than have humiliated myself so
before her. She will never forgive that blow."

"I was mad when I did it; and she drove me mad," says Barnes. "She has
the temper of a fiend, and the ingenuity of the devil. In two years an
entire change has come over her. If I had used a knife to her I should
not have been surprised. But it is not with you to reproach me about
Clara. Your ladyship found her for me."

"And you spoilt her after she was found, sir. She told me part of her
story that night she came to me. I know it is true, Barnes. You have
treated her dreadfully, sir."

"I know that she makes my life miserable, and there is no help for it,"
says Barnes, grinding a curse between his teeth. "Well, well, no more
about this. How is Ethel? Gone to sleep after her journey? What do you
think, ma'am, I have brought for her? A proposal."

"Bon Dieu! You don't mean to say Charles Belsize was in earnest!" cries
the dowager. "I always thought it was a----"

"It is not from Lord Highgate, ma'am," Sir Barnes said, gloomily. "It
is some time since I have known that he was not in earnest; and he knows
that I am now."

"Gracious goodness! come to blows with him, too? You have not? That
would be the very thing to make the world talk," says the dowager, with
some anxiety.

"No," answers Barnes. "He knows well enough that there can be no open
rupture. We had some words the other day at a dinner he gave at his own
house; Colonel Newcome and that young beggar, Clive, and that fool, Mr.
Hobson, were there. Lord Highgate was confoundedly insolent