iate Charley Sedley in time."

"Charley Sedley, Bob!" said Jennie, with crimson indignation. "I wonder
you will always bring up that old story, when I've told you a hundred
times how disagreeable it is! Charley and I are good friends, but"----

"There, there," said Bob, "that will do; you don't need to proceed
further."

"You only said that because you couldn't answer my argument," said
Jennie.

"Well, my dear," said Bob, "you know everything has two sides to it, and
I'll admit that you have brought up the opposite side to mine quite
handsomely; but, for all that, I am convinced, that, if what I said was
not really the truth, yet the truth lies somewhere in the vicinity of
it. As I said before, so I say again, true love ought to beget a freedom
which shall do away with the necessity of ceremony, and much may and
ought to be tolerated among near and dear friends that would be
discourteous among strangers. I am just as sure of this as of anything
in the world."

"And yet," said my wife, "there is certainly truth in the much quoted
lines of Cowper, on Friendship, where he says,--

"As similarity of mind,
Or something not to be defined,
First fixes our attention,
So manners decent and polite,
The same we practised at first sight,
Will save it from declension."

"Well, now," said Bob, "I've seen enough of French politeness between
married people. When I was in Paris, I remember there was in our
boarding-house a Madame de Villiers, whose husband had conferred upon
her his name and the _de_ belonging to it, in consideration of a snug
little income which she brought to him by the marriage. His conduct
towards her was a perfect model of all the graces of civilized life. It
was true that he lived on her income, and spent it in promenading the
Boulevards, and visiting theatres and operas with divers fair friends of
easy morals; still all this was so courteously, so politely, so
diplomatically arranged with Madame, that it was quite worth while to be
neglected and cheated for the sake of having the thing done in so
finished and elegant a manner, according to his showing. Monsieur had
taken the neat little apartment for her in our _pension_, because his
circumstances were embarrassed, and he would be in despair to drag such
a creature into hardships which he described as terrific, and which he
was resolved heroically to endure alone. No, while a sous remained to
them, his adored Julie should ha