st
paired--insensible to inconvenience just for the moment." Caroline, made
perhaps a little too courageous by her temporary good spirits, here
hazarded a remark of a kind she had never before ventured to make on
observations dropped by her revered relative.

"Uncle," said she, "whenever you speak of marriage you speak of it
scornfully. Do you think people shouldn't marry?"

"It is decidedly the wisest plan to remain single, especially for
women."

"Are all marriages unhappy?"

"Millions of marriages are unhappy. If everybody confessed the truth,
perhaps all are more or less so."

"You are always vexed when you are asked to come and marry a couple.
Why?"

"Because one does not like to act as accessory to the commission of a
piece of pure folly."

Mr. Helstone spoke so readily, he seemed rather glad of the opportunity
to give his niece a piece of his mind on this point. Emboldened by the
impunity which had hitherto attended her questions, she went a little
further.

"But why," said she, "should it be pure folly? If two people like each
other, why shouldn't they consent to live together?"

"They tire of each other--they tire of each other in a month. A
yokefellow is not a companion; he or she is a fellow-sufferer."

It was by no means naive simplicity which inspired Caroline's next
remark; it was a sense of antipathy to such opinions, and of displeasure
at him who held them.

"One would think you had never been married, uncle. One would think you
were an old bachelor."

"Practically, I am so."

"But you have been married. Why were you so inconsistent as to marry?"

"Every man is mad once or twice in his life."

"So you tired of my aunt, and my aunt of you, and you were miserable
together?"

Mr. Helstone pushed out his cynical lip, wrinkled his brown forehead,
and gave an inarticulate grunt.

"Did she not suit you? Was she not good-tempered? Did you not get used
to her? Were you not sorry when she died?"

"Caroline," said Mr. Helstone, bringing his hand slowly down to within
an inch or two of the table, and then smiting it suddenly on the
mahogany, "understand this: it is vulgar and puerile to confound
generals with particulars. In every case there is the rule and there are
the exceptions. Your questions are stupid and babyish. Ring the bell, if
you have done breakfast."

The breakfast was taken away, and that meal over, it was the general
custom of uncle and niece to separate, and not to meet ag