ions, and snares, and the rest of
it," said Lady Lackington; "it is a very tiresome cant. You may tell me
while I am waiting for my fish-sauce at dinner, it is a temptation; but
if you wish me really to understand the word, tell me of some wonderful
speculation, some marvellous scheme for securing millions. Oh, dear Mr.
Dunn, you who really know the way, will you just show me the road to--I
will be moderate--about twenty thousand pounds?"

"Nothing easier, my Lady, if you are disposed to risk forty."

"But I am not, sir. I have not the slightest intention to risk one
hundred. I 'm not a gambler."

"And yet what your Ladyship points at is very like gambling."

"Pray place that word along with temptation, in the forbidden category;
it is quite hateful to me."

"Have _you_ the same dislike to chance, Lady Grace?" said he, stealing a
look at her face with some earnestness.

"No," said she, in a low voice; "it is all I have to look for."

"By the way, Mr. Dunn, what are they doing in Parliament about us? Is
there not something contemplated by which we can insist upon separate
maintenance, or having a suitable settlement, or--"

"Separation--divorce," said Lady Grace, solemnly.

"No, my Lady, the law is only repairing an old road, not making a new
one. The want of the age is cheapness,--cheap literature, cheap postage,
and cheap travelling, and why not cheap divorce? Legislation now
professes as its great aim to extend to the poor all the comforts of the
rich; and as this is supposed to be one of them--"

"Have you any reason to doubt it, sir?" asked Lady Grace.

"Luxuries cease to be luxuries when they become common. Cheap divorce
will be as unfashionable as cheap pine-apple when a coal-heaver can have
it," said Lady Lackington.

"You mistake, it seems to me, what constitutes the luxury," interposed
Lady Grace. "Every day of the year sees men liberated from prison, yet
no one will pretend that the sense of freedom is less dear to every
creature thus delivered."

"Your figure is but too like," said Dunn. "The divorced wife will be to
the world only too much a resemblance of the liberated prisoner. Dark
or fair, guilty or innocent, she will carry with her the opprobrium of
a public trial, a discussion, and a verdict. Now, how few of us would
go through an operation in public for the cure of a malady! Would we not
rather hug our sorrows and our sufferings in secrecy than accept health
on such conditions?"

"Not