And in that quadrille Crofts and Bell had been dancing together, and
they also had been talking of Lily's marriage. "A man may undergo
what he likes for himself," he had said, "but he has no right to make
a woman undergo poverty."

"Perhaps not," said Bell.

"That which is no suffering for a man,--which no man should think of
for himself,--will make a hell on earth for a woman."

"I suppose it would," said Bell, answering him without a sign of
feeling in her face or voice. But she took in every word that he
spoke, and disputed their truth inwardly with all the strength of
her heart and mind, and with the very vehemence of her soul. "As if
a woman cannot bear more than a man!" she said to herself, as she
walked the length of the room alone, when she had got herself free
from the doctor's arm.

CHAPTER X

Mrs Lupex and Amelia Roper

I should simply mislead a confiding reader if I were to tell him that
Mrs Lupex was an amiable woman. Perhaps the fact that she was not
amiable is the one great fault that should be laid to her charge;
but that fault had spread itself so widely, and had cropped forth in
so many different places of her life, like a strong rank plant that
will show itself all over a garden, that it may almost be said that
it made her odious in every branch of life, and detestable alike
to those who knew her little and to those who knew her much. If a
searcher could have got at the inside spirit of the woman, that
searcher would have found that she wished to go right,--that she did
make, or at any rate promise to herself that she would make, certain
struggles to attain decency and propriety. But it was so natural to
her to torment those whose misfortune brought them near to her, and
especially that wretched man who in an evil day had taken her to his
bosom as his wife, that decency fled from her, and propriety would
not live in her quarters.

Mrs Lupex was, as I have already described her, a woman not without
some feminine attraction in the eyes of those who like morning
negligence and evening finery, and do not object to a long nose
somewhat on one side. She was clever in her way, and could say smart
things. She could flatter also, though her very flattery had always
in it something that was disagreeable. And she must have had some
power of will, as otherwise her husband would have escaped from
her before the days of which I am writing. Otherwise, also, she
could hardly have obtained her fo