ic for anything so humdrum as that. She insisted that he should
abduct her, at night too and through a window, although she had the key
of every door close at hand.

So Margari had managed to set up as a gentleman and become his own
master. Clementina's money bought the furniture and they even sported a
musical clock.

Mr. Margari had a smoking-room all to himself, in which he did nothing
all day but smoke his pipe. No more work for him now, no more copying of
MSS. There the happy husband, dressed in a flowered dressing-gown,
stretched himself out at full length on the sofa and blew clouds of
smoke all around him out of his long csibuk, stuffed full with the best
Turkish tobacco.

Clementina was always scolding him for putting his legs upon the sofa.
It was a nasty habit she said, and not only unbecoming but expensive,
because it ruined the furniture. Clementina, in fact, was scolding him
all day; and this was very natural, for any woman who has been condemned
to obsequious servility for thirty whole years and has silently endured
the caprices of her betters all that time, when she sets up as a lady on
her own account will do her best to compensate herself for this
interminable suppression of her natural instincts. But Mr. Margari used
only to laugh when his wife began nagging at him. "_Alios jam vidi ego
ventos, aliasque procellas_," he would say. He was only too glad to have
a home of his own at all.

"Don't worry, woman!" he would say with reference to the furniture,
"when that's worn out, I'll buy some more. John Lapussa, Esq., will give
me whatever I want."

"He may be fool enough to do so now," replied Clementina, "but just you
wait till he has won his action against Madame Langai and has no further
need of you, he won't care two pence for you then. I know Mr. John
Lapussa."

"So do I," retorted Margari. "He has paid me hitherto to say what he
tells me, he shall pay me hereafter for holding my tongue. John Lapussa,
Esq., will have to take care that Margari has plenty to eat and decent
clothes to put on, for, if Margari grows hungry, Margari will bite."

Mr. Margari spoke with an air of such impertinent assurance and blew
about such clouds of smoke that Clementina began to respect him, and sat
down on the sofa by his side, no doubt to protect her property. "If you
hold his honour so completely in the palm of your hand," said she, "why
don't you provide better for yourself and me? It is all very well for
hi