the ordinary young female. She stamps her
impression on the people she meets. Her husband is shaken to confess it
likewise, despite a disagreement between them.

He has owned he is her husband: he has not disavowed the consequence.
That fellow, Gower Woodseer, might accuse the husband of virtually
lying, if he by his conduct implied her distastefulness or worse. By
heaven! as felon a deed as could be done. Argue the case anyhow, it
should be undone. Let her but cease to madden. For whatever the rawness
of the woman, she has qualities; and experience of the facile loves of
London very sharply defines her qualities. Think of her as raw, she has
the gift of rareness: forget the donkey obstinacy, her character grasps.
In the grasp of her character, one inclines, and her husband inclines,
to become her advocate. She has only to discontinue maddening.

The wealthy young noble prized any form of rareness wherever it was
visible, having no thought of the purchase of it, except with worship.
He could listen pleased to the talk of a Methodist minister sewing
bootleather. He picked up a roadside tramp and made a friend of him,
and valued the fellow's honesty, submitted to his lectures, pardoned his
insolence. The sight of Carinthia's narrow bedroom and strip of bed
over Sarah Winch's Whitechapel shop had gone a step to drown the bobbing
Whitechapel Countess. At least, he had not been hunted by that gaunt
chalk-quarry ghost since his peep into the room. Own it! she likewise
has things to forgive. Women nurse their larvae of ideas about fair
dealing. But observe the distinction: aid if women understood justice
they would be the first to proclaim, that when two are tied together,
the one who does the other serious injury is more naturally excused than
the one who-tenfold abhorrent if a woman!--calls up the grotesque to
extinguish both.

With this apology for himself, Lord Fleetwood grew tolerant of the
person honourably avowed as his wife. So; therefore, the barrier between
him and his thoughts of her was broken. The thoughts carrying red doses
were selected. Finally, the taste to meet her sprouted. If agreeable,
she could be wooed; if barely agreeable, tormented; if disagreeable,
left as before.

Although it was the hazard of a die, he decided to follow his taste. Her
stay at the castle had kept him long from the duties of his business;
and he could imagine it a grievance if he pleased, but he put it aside.
Alighting at his chi