d of holding aloof from everything
he does, and never being there when he wants her. Oh! I have no patience
with her. But, of course, I must--" said Miss Raeburn, hastily
correcting herself--"of course, I must have patience."

"It will all come right, I am sure, when they are married," said Lady
Winterbourne, rather helplessly.

"That's just what my brother says," cried Miss Raeburn, exasperated. "He
won't hear a word--declares she is odd and original, and that Aldous
will soon know how to manage her. It's all very well; nowadays men
_don't_ manage their wives; that's all gone with the rest. And I am
sure, my dear, if she behaves after she is married as she is doing now,
with that most objectionable person Mr. Wharton--walking, and talking,
and taking up his ideas, and going to his meetings--she'll be a handful
for any husband."

"Mr. Wharton!" said Lady Winterbourne, astonished. Her absent black
eyes, the eyes of the dreamer, of the person who lives by a few intense
affections, saw little or nothing of what was going on immediately under
them. "Oh! but that is because he is staying in the house, and he is a
Socialist; she calls herself one--"

"My _dear_," said Miss Raeburn, interrupting emphatically;
"if--you--had--now--an unmarried daughter at home--engaged or not--would
you care to have Harry Wharton hanging about after her?"

"Harry Wharton?" said the other, pondering; "he is the Levens' cousin,
isn't he? he used to stay with them. I don't think I have seen him since
then. But yes, I do remember; there was something--something
disagreeable?"

She stopped with a hesitating, interrogative air. No one talked less
scandal, no one put the uglinesses of life away from her with a hastier
hand than Lady Winterbourne. She was one of the most consistent of moral
epicures.

"Yes, _extremely_ disagreeable," said Miss Raeburn, sitting bolt
upright. "The man has no principles--never had any, since he was a child
in petticoats. I know Aldous thinks him unscrupulous in politics and
everything else. And then, just when you are worked to death, and have
hardly a moment for your own affairs, to have a man of that type always
at hand to spend odd times with your lady love--flattering her, engaging
her in his ridiculous schemes, encouraging her in all the extravagances
she has got her head twice too full of already, setting her against your
own ideas and the life she will have to live--you will admit that it is
not exactly soo