myself, and it _does_ please me enormously. Inez, confound her!
badgers me enough. I didn't expect, Aunt Helena, to be badgered by
you."

"I have no wish to badger you. I bring no charge against your wife. I
have seen her but once, and personally I like her excessively. I
believe her to be as good as she is pretty. But again _your_ conduct
I do and will protest. You have cruelly, shamefully wronged your
cousin--humiliated her beyond all telling. I can only wonder--yes,
Victor, wonder--that with her fiery nature she takes it as quietly as
she does."

"As quietly as she does! Good Heavens!" burst forth this "badgered"
baronet. "You should live in the same house with her to find out how
quietly she takes it. Women understand how to torture--they should
have been grand inquisitors of a Spanish inquisition, if such a thing
ever existed. I am afraid to face her. She stabs my wife in fifty
different ways fifty times a day, and I--my guilty conscience won't
let me silence her. Ethel has not known a happy hour since she entered
Catheron Royals, and all through her infernal serpent tongue. Let her
take care--if she were ten times my cousin, even she may go one step
too far."

"Does that mean, Victor, you will turn her from Catheron Royals?"

"It means that, if you like. Inez is my cousin, Ethel is my wife. You
are her friend, Aunt Helena; you will be doing a friendly action if
you drop her a hint. I wish you good-morning."

He took his hat and turned to go, his handsome blonde face sullen and