t to live a happy life,
at your age, with a young man for your husband?"

"A happy life," Miss Dulane repeated, "because it will be an innocent
life." She laid a certain emphasis on the last word but one.

Mrs. Newsham resented the emphasis, and rose to go. Her last words were
the bitterest words that she had spoken yet.

"You have secured such a truly remarkable husband, my dear, that I
am emboldened to ask a great favor. Will you give me his lordship's
photograph?"

"No," said Miss Dulane, "I won't give you his lordship's photograph."

"What is your objection, Matilda?"

"A very serious objection, Elizabeth. You are not pure enough in mind to
be worthy of my husband's photograph."

With that reply the first of the remonstrances assumed hostile
proportions, and came to an untimely end.

II.

THE second remonstrance was reserved for a happier fate. It took its
rise in a conversation between two men who were old and true friends. In
other words, it led to no quarreling.

The elder man was one of those admirable human beings who are cordial,
gentle, and good-tempered, without any conscious exercise of their own
virtues. He was generally known in the world about him by a fond and
familiar use of his Christian name. To call him "Sir Richard" in these
pages (except in the character of one of his servants) would be
simply ridiculous. When he lent his money, his horses, his house, and
(sometimes, after unlucky friends had dropped to the lowest social
depths) even his clothes, this general benefactor was known, in the best
society and the worst society alike, as "Dick." He filled the hundred
mouths of Rumor with his nickname, in the days when there was an
opera in London, as the proprietor of the "Beauty-box." The ladies who
occupied the box were all invited under the same circumstances. They
enjoyed operatic music; but their husbands and fathers were not rich
enough to be able to gratify that expensive taste. Dick's carriage
called for them, and took them home again; and the beauties all agreed
(if he ever married) that Mrs. Dick would be the most enviable woman on
the face of the civilized earth. Even the false reports, which declared
that he was privately married already, and on bad terms with his
wife, slandered him cordially under the popular name. And his intimate
companions, when they alluded among each other to a romance in his life
which would remain a hidden romance to the end of his days, forgot that
the