?"

"Everything about Mary. It's a slander to mention that man's name in
connection with her,--a calumny which I will not endure."

"How is it, then, if they mention mine in connection with you?"

"I am saying nothing about that."

"But I suppose you think of it. I am hardly of less importance to
myself than Lady George is to herself. I did think I was not of less
importance to you."

"Nobody ever was or ever can be of so much importance to me as my wife,
and I will be on good terms with no one who speaks evil of her."

"They may say what they like of me?"

"Mr. Houghton must look to that."

"It is no business of yours, George?"

He paused a moment, and then found the courage to answer her.
"No--none," he said. Had she confined herself to her own assumed
wrongs, her own pretended affection,--had she contented herself with
quarrelling with him for his carelessness, and had then called upon him
for some renewed expression of love,--he would hardly have been strong
enough to withstand her. But she could not keep her tongue from
speaking evil of his wife. From the moment in which he had called Mary
an angel, it was necessary to her comfort to malign the angel. She did
not quite know the man, or the nature of men generally. A man, if his
mind be given that way, may perhaps with safety whisper into a woman's
ear that her husband is untrue to her. Such an accusation may serve his
purpose. But the woman, on her side, should hold her peace about the
man's wife. A man must be very degraded indeed if his wife be not holy
to him. Lord George had been driving his wife almost mad during the
last twenty-four hours by implied accusations, and yet she was to him
the very holy of holies. All the Popenjoy question was as nothing to
him in comparison with the sanctity of her name. And now, weak as he
was, incapable as he would have been, under any other condition of
mind, of extricating himself from the meshes which this woman was
spinning for him, he was enabled to make an immediate and most salutary
plunge by the genuine anger she had produced. "No, none," he said.

"Oh, very well. The angel is everything to you, and I am nothing?"

"Yes; my wife is everything to me."

"How dared you, then, come here and talk to me of love? Do you think I
will stand this,--that I will endure to be treated in this way? Angel,
indeed! I tell you that she cares more for Jack De Baron's little
finger than for your whole body. She is never happy