nly makes them, if possible, worse. Leave me!"

CHAPTER XXVI.

"AT SIXES AND SEVENS."

Pol.--"What do you read, my lord?"

Ham.--"Words, words, words."

She sighs heavily, as the door closes on her brother. A sense of
weakness, of powerlessness oppresses her. She has fought so long, and
for what? Is there nothing to be gained; no truth to be defended
anywhere, no standard of right and wrong. Are all men--all--base,
selfish, cowardly, dishonorable? Her whole being seems aflame with the
indignation that is consuming her, when a knock sounds at the door.
There is only one person in the house who knocks at her boudoir door. To
every one, servants, guests, child, it is a free land; to her husband
alone it is forbidden ground.

"Come in," says she, in a cold, reluctant tone.

"I know I shall be terribly in your way," says Baltimore, entering, "but
I must beg you to give me five minutes. I hear Beauclerk has returned,
and that you have seen him. What kept him?"

Now Lady Baltimore--who a moment ago had condemned her brother heartily
to his face--feels, as her husband addresses her, a perverse desire to
openly contradict all that her honest judgment had led her to say to
Beauclerk. That sense of indignation that was burning so hotly in her
breast as Baltimore knocked at her door still stirs within her, but now
its fire is directed against this latest comer. Who is he, that he
should dare to question the honor of any man; and that there is
annoyance and condemnation now in Baltimore's eyes is not to be denied.

"The weather," returns she shortly.

"By your tone I judge you deem that an adequate excuse for keeping Miss
Kavanagh from her home for half a day and a night."

"There was a terrible storm," says. Lady Baltimore calmly; "the worst we
have had for months."

"If it had been ten times as bad he should, in my opinion, have come
home."

The words seem a mere repetition to Lady Baltimore. She had, indeed,
used them to Beauclerk herself, or some such, a few minutes ago. Yet she
seems to repudiate all sympathy with them now.

"On such a night as that? I hardly see why. Joyce was with an old
friend. Mrs. Connolly was once a servant of her father's, and he----"

"Should have left her with the old friend and come home."

Again her own argument, and again perversity drives her to take the
opposite side--the side against her conscience.

"Society must be in a very bad state if a man must perforce