able to render me some service for which you
shall have the letters--who knows? You see I am perfectly frank with
you, for the simple reason that I know that it is useless to try to
conceal my thoughts from a person of your perception."

"Well, well, perhaps you are right: it is difficult to trust oneself,
much less any one else. At any rate," she said, with a bitter smile,
"you have given me Bellamy, a start in society, and a sapphire
necklace. In twenty years, I hope, if the fates are kind, to have lost
Bellamy on the road--he is really unendurable--to rule society, and to
have as many sapphire necklaces and other fine things as I care for.
In enumerating my qualities, you omitted one, ambition."

"With your looks, your determination, and your brains, there is
nothing that you will not be able to do if you set your mind to it,
and don't make an enemy of your devoted friend."

And thus the conversation ended.

Now little Bellamy had, after much anxious thought, just about this
time come to a bold determination--namely, to asset his marital
authority over Mrs. Bellamy. Indeed, his self-pride was much injured
by the treatment he received at his wife's hands, for it seemed to him
that he was utterly ignored in his own house. In fact, it would not be
too much to say that he _was_ an entire nonentity. He had married Mrs.
Bellamy for love, or rather from fascination, though she had nothing
in the world--married her in a fortnight from the time that George had
first introduced him. When he had walked out of church with his
beautiful bride, he had thought himself the luckiest man in London,
whereas now he could not but feel that matrimony had not fulfilled his
expectations. In the first place, Love's young dream--he was barely
thirty--came to a rude awakening, for, once married, it was impossible
--though he had, in common with the majority of little men, a
tolerably good opinion of himself--but that he should perceive that
his wife did not care one brass farthing about him. To his soft
advances she was as cold as a marble statue, the lovely eyes never
grew tender for him. Indeed, he found that she was worse than a
statue, for statues cannot indulge in bitter mockery and contemptuous
comments, and Mrs. Bellamy could, and, what is more, frequently did.

"It is very well," reflected her husband, "to marry the loveliest
woman in the county, but I don't see the use of it if she treats one
like a dog."

At last this state of