see Adelaide Houghton again. But, before
anything of this could be achieved, he would have to own himself a
sinner before her. He would have, as it were, to grovel at her feet.
Hitherto, in all his intercourse with her, he had been masterful and
marital. He had managed up to this point so to live as to have kept in
all respects the upper hand. He had never yet been found out even in a
mistake or an indiscretion. He had never given her an opening for the
mildest finding of fault. She, no doubt, was young, and practice had
not come to her. But, as a natural consequence of this, Lord George had
hitherto felt that an almost divine superiority was demanded from him.
That sense of divine superiority must now pass away.

I do not know whether a husband's comfort is ever perfect till some
family peccadilloes have been conclusively proved against him. I am
sure that a wife's temper to him is sweetened by such evidence of human
imperfection. A woman will often take delight in being angry; will
sometimes wrap herself warm in prolonged sullenness; will frequently
revel in complaint;--but she enjoys forgiving better than aught else.
She never feels that all the due privileges of her life have been
accorded to her, till her husband shall have laid himself open to the
caresses of a pardon. Then, and not till then, he is her equal; and
equality is necessary for comfortable love. But the man, till he be
well used to it, does not like to be pardoned. He has assumed divine
superiority, and is bound to maintain it. Then, at last, he comes home
some night with a little too much wine, or he cannot pay the weekly
bills because he has lost too much money at cards, or he has got into
trouble at his office and is in doubt for a fortnight about his place,
or perhaps a letter from a lady falls into wrong hands. Then he has to
tell himself that he has been "found out." The feeling is at first very
uncomfortable; but it is, I think, a step almost necessary in reaching
true matrimonial comfort. Hunting men say that hard rain settles the
ground. A good scold with a "kiss and be friends" after it, perhaps,
does the same.

Now Lord George had been found out. He was quite sure of that. And he
had to undergo all that was unpleasant without sufficient experience to
tell him that those clouds too would pass away quickly. He still walked
homewards across St. James's Park, never stopping, but dragging himself
along slowly, and when he came to his own door he