the right to imagine
anything against my husband and to seek to punish him through me. And
when I said that everything I have belongs to him, I was not thinking
of the law--no--but only this: that everything I have, or might have,
would belong to him, as I myself belong to him of my own free will and
gift; and I would have no money or anything else that was not entirely
his."

"You are a fool."

"Perhaps," said Sheila, struggling to repress her tears.

"What if I were to leave every farthing of my property to a hospital?
Where would Frank Lavender be then?"

"He could earn his own living without any such help," said Sheila
proudly; for she had never yet given up the hope that her husband
would fulfill the fair promise of an earlier time, and win great
renown for himself in striving to please her, as he had many a time
vowed he would do.

"He has taken great care to conceal his powers in that way," said the
old woman with a sneer.

"And if he has, whose fault is it?" the girl said warmly. "Who has
kept him in idleness but yourself? And now you blame him for it. I
wish he had never had any of your money--I wish he were never to have
any more of it."

And then Sheila stopped, with a terrible dread falling over her. What
had she not said? The pride of her race had carried her so far, and
she had given expression to all the tumult of her heart; but had
she not betrayed her duty as a wife, and grievously compromised the
interests of her husband? And yet the indignation in her bosom was
too strong to admit of her retracting those fatal phrases and begging
forgiveness. She stood for a moment irresolute, and she knew that
the invalid was regarding her curiously, as though she were some wild
animal, and not an ordinary resident in Bayswater.

"You are a little mad, but you are a good girl, and I want to
be friends with you. You have in you the spirit of a dozen Frank
Lavenders."

"You will never make friends with me by speaking ill of my husband,"
said Sheila with the same proud and indignant look.

"Not when he ill uses you?" "He does not ill use me. What has Mr.
Ingram been saying to you?"

The sudden question would certainly have brought about a disclosure if
any were to have been made; but Mrs. Lavender assured Sheila that
Mr. Ingram had told her nothing, that she had been forming her own
conclusions, and that she still doubted that they were right.

"Now sit down and read to me. You will find Marcus Antoninu