her cousin Jack. He raised his hat, but could not stop a moment. Mrs.
Houghton made an attempt to arrest him,--but he escaped without a word
and went on very quickly. His wife had behaved generously about Mrs.
Houghton. The sight of the woman brought that truth to his mind. He was
aware of that. But no generosity on the part of the wife, no love, no
temper, no virtue, no piety can be accepted by Caesar as weighing a
grain in counterpoise against even suspicion.

He found his wife and asked her whether her things were being packed.
"I cannot go to-morrow," she said.

"Not go?"

"No, George;--not to Cross Hall. I will go to the deanery. You promised
to go to the deanery."

"I will not go to the deanery. I will go to Cross Hall." There was an
hour of it, but during the entire hour, the young wife persisted
obstinately that she would not be taken to Cross Hall. "She had," she
said, "been very badly treated by her husband's family." "Not by me,"
shouted the husband. She went on to say that nothing could now really
put her right but the joint love of her father and her husband. Were
she at Cross Hall her father could do nothing for her. She would not go
to Cross Hall. Nothing short of policemen should take her to Cross Hall
to-morrow.

CHAPTER XLIII.

REAL LOVE.

"He is looking awfully cut up," Mrs. Houghton said to her cousin.

"He is one of the most infernal fools that ever I came across in my
life," said Jack.

"I don't see that he is a fool at all,--any more than all men are
fools. There isn't one among you is ever able to keep his little
troubles to himself. You are not a bit wiser than the rest of them
yourself."

"I haven't got any troubles,--of that sort."

"You haven't a wife,--but you'll be forced into having one before long.
And when you like another man's wife you can't keep all the world from
knowing it."

"All the world may know everything that has taken place between me and
Lady George," said Jack. "Of course I like her."

"I should say, rather."

"And so do you."

"No, I don't, sir. I don't like her at all. She is a foolish,
meaningless little creature, with nothing to recommend her but a pretty
colour. And she has cut me because her husband will come and pour out
his sorrow into my ears. For his sake I used to be good to her."

"I think she is the sweetest human being I ever came across in my
life," said Jack, enthusiastically.

"Everybody in London knows that you think so,--