th. Have you rejected
Sir Philip Nunnely?'

"I put this question suddenly and promptly.

"'Did you think I should take him?'

"'I thought you might.'

"'On what grounds, may I ask?'

"'Conformity of rank, age, pleasing contrast of temper--for _he_ is mild
and amiable--harmony of intellectual tastes.'

"'A beautiful sentence! Let us take it to pieces. "Conformity of rank."
He is quite above me. Compare my grange with his palace, if you please.
I am disdained by his kith and kin. "Suitability of age." We were born
in the same year; consequently he is still a boy, while I am a
woman--ten years his senior to all intents and purposes. "Contrast of
temper." Mild and amiable, is he; I--what? Tell me.'

"'Sister of the spotted, bright, quick, fiery leopard.'

"'And you would mate me with a kid--the millennium being yet millions of
centuries from mankind; being yet, indeed, an archangel high in the
seventh heaven, uncommissioned to descend? Unjust barbarian! "Harmony of
intellectual tastes." He is fond of poetry, and I hate it----'

"'Do you? That is news.'

"'I absolutely shudder at the sight of metre or at the sound of rhyme
whenever I am at the priory or Sir Philip at Fieldhead. Harmony,
indeed! When did I whip up syllabub sonnets or string stanzas fragile as
fragments of glass? and when did I betray a belief that those
penny-beads were genuine brilliants?'

"'You might have the satisfaction of leading him to a higher standard,
of improving his tastes.'

"'Leading and improving! teaching and tutoring! bearing and forbearing!
Pah! my husband is not to be my baby. I am not to set him his daily
lesson and see that he learns it, and give him a sugar-plum if he is
good, and a patient, pensive, pathetic lecture if he is bad. But it is
like a tutor to talk of the "satisfaction of teaching." I suppose _you_
think it the finest employment in the world. I don't. I reject it.
Improving a husband! No. I shall insist upon my husband improving me, or
else we part.'

"'God knows it is needed!'

"'What do you mean by that, Mr. Moore?'

"'What I say. Improvement is imperatively needed.'

"'If you were a woman you would school _monsieur, votre mari_,
charmingly. It would just suit you; schooling is your vocation.'

"'May I ask whether, in your present just and gentle mood, you mean to
taunt me with being a tutor?'

"'Yes, bitterly; and with anything else you please--any defect of which
you are painfully conscious.'

"