hose immaculate
people will prove to you that my father ascended his throne in----"

"You can laugh at me if you like, Freddy," says Mrs. Monkton with
severity tempered with dignity; "but if you laughed until this day month
you couldn't make me forget the things that make me unhappy."

"I don't want to," says Mr. Monkton, still disgracefully frivolous.
"_I'm_ one of the things, and yet----"

"Don't!" says his wife, so abruptly, and with such an evident
determination to give way to mirth, coupled with an equally strong
determination to give way to tears, that he at once lays down his arms.

"Go on then," says he, seating himself beside her. She is not in the
arm-chair now, but on an ancient and respectable sofa that gives ample
room for the accommodation of two; a luxury denied by that old
curmudgeon the arm-chair.

"Well, it is this, Freddy. When I think of that dreadful old woman, Mrs.
Burke, I feel as though you thought she was a fair sample of the rest of
my family. But she is _not_ a sample, she has nothing to do with us. An
uncle of my mother married her because she was rich, and there her
relationship to us began and ended."

"Still----"

"Yes, I know, you needn't remind me, it seems burnt into my brain, I
know she took us in after my father's death, and covered me and Joyce
with benefits when we hadn't a penny in the world we could call our own.
I quite understand, indeed, that we should have starved but for her, and
yet--yet--" passionately, "I cannot forgive her for perpetually
reminding us that we had _not_ that penny!"

"It must have been a bad time," says Monkton slowly. He takes her hand
and smoothes it lovingly between both of his.

"She was vulgar. That was not her fault; I forgive her that. What I
can't forgive her, is the fact that you should have met me in her
house."

"A little unfair, isn't it?"

"Is it? You will always now associate me with her!"

"I shan't indeed. Do you think I have up to this? Nonsense! A more
absurd amalgamation I couldn't fancy."

"She was not one of us," feverishly. "I have never spoken to you about
this, Freddy, since that first letter your father wrote to you just
after our marriage. You remember it? And then, I couldn't explain
somehow--but now--this last letter has upset me dreadfully; I feel as if
it was all different, and that it was my duty to make you aware of the
_real_ truth. Sir George thinks of me as one beneath him; that is not
true. He may have h