itable difficulties with which he knew himself to be
incapable to cope. "It is true," he said to his wife very gloomily,
when he first met her after his interview with Mr. Knox.

"What Miss Houghton said? I felt sure it was true, directly she told
me."

"I don't know why you should have felt sure, merely on her word, as to
a thing so monstrous as this is. You don't seem to see that it concerns
yourself."

"No; I don't. It doesn't concern me at all, except as it makes you
unhappy." Then there was a pause for a moment, during which she crept
close up to him, in a manner that had now become usual with her. "Why
do you think I married you?" she said. He was too unhappy to answer her
pleasantly,--too much touched by her sweetness to answer her
unpleasantly; and so he said nothing. "Certainly not with any hope that
I might become Marchioness of Brotherton. Whatever may have made me do
such a thing, I can assure you that that had nothing to do with it."

"Can't you look forward? Don't you suppose that you may have a son?"
Then she buried her face upon his shoulder. "And if so, would it not be
better that a child so born should be the heir, than some Italian baby,
of whom no one knows anything?"

"If you are unhappy, George, I shall be unhappy. But for myself I will
not affect to care anything. I don't want to be a Marchioness. I only
want to see you without a frown on your brow. To tell the truth, if you
didn't mind it, I should care nothing about your brother and his
doings. I would make a joke of this Marchese, who, Miss Houghton says,
is a puckered-faced old woman. Miss Houghton seems to care a great deal
more about it than I do."

"It cannot be a subject for a joke." He was almost angry at the idea of
the wife of the head of the family being made a matter of laughter.
That she should be reprobated, hated,--cursed, if necessary,--was
within the limits of family dignity; but not that she should become a
joke to those with whom she had unfortunately connected herself. When
he had finished speaking to her she could not but feel that he was
displeased, and could not but feel also the injustice of such
displeasure. Of course she had her own little share in the general
disappointments. But she had striven before him to make nothing of it,
in order that he might be quite sure that she had married him--not with
any idea of rank or wealth, but for himself alone. She had made light
of the family misfortune, in order that he mi