a good deal about him, you know; but I shouldn't want
always to be telling him that I was thinking about him. He ought to be
contented with knowing how much he was to me. I suppose that would not
suffice for you?"

Lord George was disposed to think that it would suffice, and that the
whole matter was now being represented to him in a very different light
than that in which he had hitherto regarded it. The word "friend"
softened down so many asperities! With such a word in his mind he need
not continually scare himself with the decalogue. All the pleasure
might be there, and the horrors altogether omitted. There would,
indeed, be no occasion for his eloquence; but he had already become
conscious that at this interview his eloquence could not be used. She
had given everything so different a turn! "Why not suffice for me?" he
said. "Only this,--that all I did for my friend I should expect her to
do for me."

"But that is unreasonable. Who doesn't see that in the world at large
men have the best of it almost in everything. The husband is not only
justified in being a tyrant, but becomes contemptible if he is not so.
A man has his pocket full of money; a woman is supposed to take what he
gives her. A man has all manner of amusements."

"What amusements have I?"

"You can come to me."

"Yes, I can do that."

"I cannot go to you. But when you come to me,--if I am to believe that
I am really your friend,--then I am to be the tyrant of the moment. Is
it not so? Do you think you would find me a hard tyrant? I own to you
freely that there is nothing in the world I like so much as your
society. Do I not earn by that a right to some obedience from you, to
some special observance?"

All this was so different from what he had expected, and so much more
pleasant! As far as he could look into it and think of it at the
pressure of the moment he did not see any reason why it should not be
as she proposed. There was clearly no need for those prepared words.
There had been one embrace,--an embrace that was objectionable because,
had either his wife seen it or Mr. Houghton, he would have been forced
to own himself wrong; but that had come from sudden impulse, and need
not be repeated. This that was now proposed to him was friendship, and
not love. "You shall have all observance," he said with his sweetest
smile.

"And as to obedience? But you are a man, and therefore must not be
pressed too hard. And now I may tell you what is th