"You little heathen!"

"Perhaps you are right," said Dolly philosophically, "Perhaps it is heathenish to love ease and pleasure and luxury, as I love them all; but, Lenny, you know I never had high aims; I should detest working for my living, or being a clergyman's wife and having to visit all sorts of miserable people, or going about as a Sister of Charity, or setting-up for a philanthropist, or a social reformer, '_Chacun a son gout_,' and it certainly would not be my _gout_ to make myself less happy than I am."

"But, Dolly, do not you think you owe a duty to your husband?"

"Of course I do, if you like to word your sentence in so disagreeable a manner, but I am not aware that I fail in my duty towards him. You do not think it necessary, I suppose, that I should make his shirts, or darn his socks so long as there are people to be found glad to earn a little money by drudging at such things. He has a comfortable home, and everything in it that he wants so far as I know. I never nag him as I hear many excellent wives nag their husbands. We never exchange an angry word. If I want anything, he says 'Very well, get it.' If he wants anything, I say 'Very well, do it.' Upon my word, Leonora, I cannot imagine what it is you wish, unless that I should begin to make myself disagreeable."

"That is exactly what I do wish," said Mrs. Werner. "Instead of treating your husband like a spoiled child whose way is on no account to be crossed, I would have you talk with him, reason, advise, consult."

"Good gracious!" interrupted Dolly "what is there to consult about; what we shall have for dinner, or the shape of his next new hat? There, don't be cross, Nora," she added, penitently as Mrs. Werner turned her head away with an impatient gesture. "Tell me what it is you want me to do, condescend to particulars, and don't generalize as is your habit, and I will be as attentive as even you could desire."

"You ought never to have allowed those people to come here," said Mrs.

Werner emphatically.

"Archibald brought them home with him, and it would surely not have been pretty manners for me to tell them to go back again."

"If you had ever been in any useful sense a helpmeet to Mr. Mortomley he would not have thought of billeting them at Homewood. Any other woman than you, Dolly, would have taught him prudence and carefulness and wisdom. I wonder your long experience of the miseries of a small income has resulted in nothing except perfect indifference to pecuniary affairs."

"You mistake," answered Dolly; "it has taught me to feel unspeakably thankful for a large income."

"Then why do you not take care of it?" asked her friend.

"I do not think I spend so much money as you," retorted Mrs. Mortomley.

"Perhaps not; but Mr. Werner's business is a much better one than your husband's, and we spend the greater part of our income in trying to increase his influence and extend his connexion."

"Oh!" said Dolly, and no form of words could do justice to the contempt she managed to convey by her rendering of that simple ejaculation.

"It is quite true," persisted Mrs. Werner, answering her tone, not her words.

"No doubt you think so," retorted Dolly, "but I do not. For instance, how should you know whether Mr. Werner's business is a better one than ours or not?"

It was not often Mrs. Mortomley claimed the colour manufactory for her own, but when it was attacked she flung personal feeling into the defence.

"Henry says so," was the convincing reply.

"Henry," with a momentary pause on the name intended to mark the word as a quotation, "Henry may know what he makes himself, but I cannot understand how he can tell what we make," and Dolly folded her hands together in her lap and waited for the next aggressive move.

"I think, my dear, City men have ways and means of ascertaining these things."

"Very likely," said Mrs. Mortomley, "for I think, my dear, City men are usually a set of ill-natured gossiping old women."

"Do not be cross, Dolly," suggested her friend.

"I shall be cross if I choose, Leonora," said Mrs. Mortomley. "It is enough to make any one cross. What right has Mr. Werner--for it is Mr.

Werner, I know, who has really spoken to me through your mouth--what right has he, I repeat, to dictate to us how we shall spend our money.

If he likes to have horrid, tiresome, vulgar, prosy people at his house--when he might get pleasant people--that is his affair. I do not interfere with him--(only I will not go to your parties)--but he has no sort of claim to dictate to us, and I will not bear it, Nora, I will not."

"Dolly, dear, I was only speaking for your good--"

"I do not want good spoken to me," interrupted Mrs. Mortomley.

"And it is not for your good," went on Mrs. Werner calmly, "that you should have Antonia and Rupert quartered here. If your husband had given them say a couple of hundred pounds a year, they would have thought far more of his generosity, and it would have cost you less than half what it will do now, besides being wiser in every way."

"Had not you better lay that statement before him yourself?" asked Dolly.

"If I were his wife I should unhesitatingly," was the reply.

"Well, I am his wife and I will not," declared Dolly. "If he likes to have them in the house I cannot see why he should not, so long as they do not make their proximity disagreeable to me; and I am not likely to let them do that, am I, Nora?"

"So long as you have your house filled with company, and are out at parties continually, perhaps not."

"Leonora," began Mrs. Mortomley, "you are the only friend I ever had in my life. I am never likely to have another; but sooner than submit to this eternal lecturing I would rather kiss and say good-bye now, than go on to an open quarrel. Why can we not agree to differ; why cannot Mr.

Werner leave my husband to manage his own affairs, and you leave me to order my way of life as seems most satisfactory to me? You think you are doing great things for your husband because, at his desire, you invite City notables and their wives to dinner, and perhaps you may be. All I can say is, I should not be doing Archie any service by inviting them here. I do not know whether rich City snobs and snobesses hate _you_--perhaps not as there is a real live lord, not a Lord Mayor, amongst your relatives--but they hate me. If I had never come in contact with one of them it might have spared us some enemies; and I never mean so long as I live to come in contact with another, except those who are unavoidable, such as Antonia's elderly young man, for instance. There is nothing I can do or wear or say right in their eyes. I feel this. I know it. They detest me because I am different from them, and they do not think, as I was not a lady of fortune or a lord's niece, I have any right to be different. I do not know why oil should impute it as a sin to water, that it is water and not oil, but these people who cannot mix with me and with whom I cannot mix, do impute it to me as a sin that I am myself and not them. There is the case in a nutshell, Mrs. Werner, and I fail to see why you and I should quarrel over it."

"But, Dolly, do you think it prudent to have so many guests here in whom it is impossible for your husband to take an interest?"

"If they do not interest they amuse him," was the reply. "And I think anything which brings him out of his laboratory even for a few hours must be advantageous to him mentally and physically. I do not believe,"

continued Dolly, warming with her subject, "in men living their lives in the City, or else amongst colours and chemicals. When we come to compare notes in our old age, Leonora, I wonder which faith, yours or mine, will be found to have contained temporal salvation."

Mrs. Werner looked down on the slight figure, at the eager upturned face, and then speaking her thoughts and that of many another person aloud, said,

"I cannot fancy you old, Dolly. I think if you live to be elderly you will be like the Countess of Desmond, who was killed by a fall from a cherry-tree in her hundred and fortieth year."

Mrs. Mortomley's laugh rang out through the clear summer air.

"Do you know," she said, "the same thought has perplexed me; only it was different. I can imagine myself old; a garrulous great-grandmother, good to Lenore's grandchildren, a white-haired, lively, pleasant old lady, fond of the society of young people; but, oh! Nora, I cannot picture myself as middle-aged. I fail to imagine the ten years passage between thirty-five and forty-five, between forty-five and fifty-five. If I could go to sleep for twenty years like Rip van Winkle, and reappear on the scene with grey hair and a nice lace cap, I should understand the _role_ perfectly; but the middle passage, I tell you fairly, the prospect of that fills me with dismay."

"And yet I also am only six years distant from the point which you kindly mark as the entrance to middle age, and can contemplate the prospect with equanimity."

"Queens never age," observed Dolly, "they only acquire dignity; ordinary mortals get crooked and battered and wrinkled and--ugly. I am afraid I shall get very ugly; grow fat, probably; fond of good living, and drink porter for luncheon."

"How can you be so absurd?" exclaimed Mrs. Werner.

"Nora," said Dolly solemnly, "I have, little as you may think it, very serious thoughts at times about my future. I would give really and truly ten pounds--and you know if I had the income of a Rothschild I should still be in want of that particular ten pounds--but I would, indeed, give that amount if any one could tell me how I should spend the twenty years stretching between thirty-five and fifty-five."

"I do not imagine the most daring gipsy could say the line of your life would be cut short."

"Oh! no, I shall reach the white hair and the lace cap and the great grandmother stage; but how? that is the question."

"My dear, leave these matters to God."

"I must, I suppose," said Dolly resignedly.

CHAPTER VII.