conversation and society. Do you blame me for that, or should I blame
myself? Condemned to live amongst brainless puppets, my dull occupation
to pull the strings that moved them, it was a new charm to my life to
establish friendship and intercourse with intellect and spirit and
courage. Ah! I understand that look, half incredulous, half
inquisitive."

"Inquisitive, no; incredulous, yes! You desired my friendship, and how
does your harsh judgment of my betrothed wife prove either to me or to her
mother, whom you have known from your girlhood, the first duty of a
friend,--which is surely not that of leaving a friend's side the moment
that he needs countenance in calumny, succour in trouble!"

"It is a better duty to prevent the calumny and avert the trouble. Leave
aside Anne Ashleigh, a cipher that I can add or abstract from my sum of
life as I please. What is my duty to yourself? It is plain. It is to
tell you that your honour commands you to abandon all thoughts of Lilian
Ashleigh as your wife. Ungrateful that you are! Do you suppose it was no
mortification to my pride of woman and friend, that you never approached
me in confidence except to ask my good offices in promoting your courtship
to another; no shock to the quiet plans I had formed as to our familiar
though harmless intimacy, to hear that you were bent on a marriage in
which my friend would be lost to me?"

"Not lost! not lost! On the contrary, the regard I must suppose you had
for Lilian would have been a new link between our homes."

"Pooh! Between me and that dreamy girl there could have been no sympathy,
there could have grown up no regard. You would have been chained to your
fireside, and--and--but no matter. I stifled my disappointment as soon as