ekyl. "I never could
exactly get to the bottom of the affair; but I suppose there must be
some pledge or promise which, in a rash moment, she has made him, and
that already she repents of."

"How has she been left in the will?" asked D'Esmonde, abruptly.

"Her own words are, 'Infamously treated.' Except a bequest of ten
thousand pounds, nothing beyond the Irish estate settled at the time of
her marriage."

"She will easily get rid of Norwood, then," rejoined the Abbe, with a
smile. "His price is higher."

"I'm not so sure of that," broke in Jekyl; "the noble Viscount's late
speculations have all proved unfortunate, even to his book on Carlo
Alberto. He thinks he has gone wrong in not hedging on Radetzky."

"What does he know of the changes of politics?" said D'Esmonde,
contemptuously. "Let him stick to his stablemen and the crafty youths
of Newmarket, but leave state affairs for other and very different
capacities. Does she care for him, Jekyl? Does she love him?"

"She does, and she does not," said Jekyl, with a languishing air,
which he sometimes assumed when asked for an opinion. "She likes his
fashionable exterior, his easy kind of drawing-room assurance, and,
perhaps not least of all, the tone of impertinent superiority he
displays towards all other men; but she is afraid of him,----afraid
of his temper and his tyrannical humor, and terribly afraid of his
extravagance."

"How amusing it is!" said D'Esmonde, with a yawn. "A minister quits
the cabinet in disgust, and retires into private life forever, when his
first step is to plot his return to power. So your widow is invariably
found weighing the thoughts of her mourning with speculations on a
second husband. Why need she marry again; tell me that?"

"Because she is a widow, perhaps. I know no other reason," lisped out
Jekyl.

"I cannot conceive a greater folly than that of these women, with ample
fortune, sacrificing their independence by marriage. The whole world is
their own, if they but knew it. They command every source of enjoyment
while young, and have all the stereotyped solaces of old age when it
comes upon them; and with poodles, parrots, and parasites, mornings of
scandal and evenings of whist, eke out a very pretty existence."

"Dash the whole with a little religion, Abbe," cried Jekyl, laughing,
"and the picture will be tolerably correct."

"She shall not marry Lord Norwood; that, at least, I can answer for,"
said D'Esmonde, not heeding t