? He should know
at least what he was costing her. It came home to her own spirit more
than ever, but meanwhile he had found his footing. "I don't see how
your mother matters. It isn't a question of his marrying _her_."

"No; but, constantly together as we've always been, it's a question of
there being so disgustingly much to get over. If we had, for people
like them, but the one ugly spot and the one weak side; if we had
made, between us, but the one vulgar _kind_ of mistake: well, I don't
say!" She reflected with a wistfulness of note that was in itself a
touching eloquence. "To have our reward in this world we've had too
sweet a time. We've had it all right down here!" said Julia Bride. "I
should have taken the precaution to have about a dozen fewer lovers."

"Ah, my dear, 'lovers'--!" He ever so comically attenuated.

"Well they _were_!" She quite flared up. "When you've had a ring from
each (three diamonds, two pearls, and a rather bad sapphire: I've kept
them all, and they tell my story!) what are you to call them?"

"Oh, rings--!" Mr. Pitman didn't call rings anything. "I've given Mrs.
Drack a ring."

Julia stared. "Then aren't you her lover?"

"That, dear child," he humorously wailed, "is what I want you to find
out! But I'll handle your rings all right," he more lucidly added.

"You'll 'handle' them?"

"I'll fix your lovers. I'll lie about _them_, if that's all you want."

"Oh, about 'them'--!" She turned away with a sombre drop, seeing so
little in it. "That wouldn't count--from _you_!" She saw the great
shining room, with its mockery of art and "style" and security, all
the things she was vainly after, and its few scattered visitors who
had left them, Mr. Pitman and herself, in their ample corner, so
conveniently at ease. There was only a lady in one of the far
doorways, of whom she took vague note and who seemed to be looking at
them. "They'd have to lie for themselves!"

"Do you mean he's capable of putting it to them?"

Mr. Pitman's tone threw discredit on that possibility, but she knew
perfectly well what she meant. "Not of getting at them directly, not,
as mother says, of nosing round himself; but of listening--and small
blame to him!--to the horrible things other people say of me."

"But what other people?"

"Why, Mrs. George Maule, to begin with--who intensely loathes us, and
who talks to his sisters, so that they may talk to _him_: which they
do, all the while, I'm morally sure (hating