y.

"She is so lovely, so good"--

"Nonsense! Were there no lovely English girls? no good English girls?
Emily is ten times lovelier."

"You know what you said."

"I said it to please you."

"Charlotte!"

"Yes, I did,--at least, in a great measure. It is easy enough to call a
pretty girl an angel; and as for my promise to love your wife, of course
I expected you would choose a wife suitable to your religion and your
birth. Suppose you selected some outlandish dress,--an Italian
brigand's, for instance,--what would the neighboring gentlemen think of
you? It would be an insult to their national costume, and they would do
right to resent it. Well, being who and what you are, you have no right
to bring an Italian woman into Seat-Sandal. It is an insult to every
woman in the county, and they will make you feel it."

"I shall not give them the opportunity. Beatrice cannot live in this
beastly climate."

"The climate is wrong also? Naturally. It would follow the religion and
the woman. Harry Sandal, I wish I had died, ere my ears had heard such a
shame and sorrow for my father and mother! Where are you going to live,
then?"

"In Florence. It is the birthplace of Beatrice the city associated with
all her triumphs."

"God have mercy, Harry! Her triumphs! Is she, then, an actress?"

"She is a singer,--a wonderful singer; one to whom the world has
listened with breathless delight."

"A singing woman! And you have married her? It is an outrage on your
ancestors, and on your parents and sisters."

"I will not hear you speak in that way, Charlotte. Of course I married
her. Did you wish me to ruin and debase her? _That_, I suppose, you
could have forgiven. My sin against the Sandals and society is, that I
married her."

"No, sir; you know better. Your sin is in having any thing whatever to
do with her. There is not a soul in Sandal that would have hesitated
between ruin and marriage. If it had to be one or the other, then father
and mother both, then I, then all your friends, would have said without
hesitation, 'Marry the woman.'"

"I expected and hoped this would be your view of the situation. I could
not give up Beatrice, and I could not be a scoundrel to her."

"You might have thought of another woman besides Beatrice. Is a sin
against a mother a less sin than one against a strange woman? A mother
is something sacred. To wound her heart is to throw a stone at her. You
have committed a sort of sacrilege. And yo