"Did I hear you tell that lady, when first you spoke to her, that she was dead?" "I thought she was." "Had you heard it?" "No." "Did you see it in the papers?" "No." A pause. "I wonder why you thought she was dead." The other makes a rather impatient movement. "I had no reason--none whatever. It was an idiotic inference." Byng draws a long breath of satisfaction. "Well, at all events, I am very glad that she is not." Jim turns upon him with something of the expression of face worn by Mrs. Sarah Gamp on hearing Mrs. Prig express her belief that it was not by Mrs. Harris that her services would be required. "Why should you be glad of that, Betsy? She is unbeknown to you except by hearing. Why should you be glad?" As Byng's case is a more aggravated one than Mrs. Prig's, seeing that Elizabeth Le Marchant is 'unbeknown' to him even by hearing, so is the warmth, or rather coldness, with which his friend receives his remark not inferior to that of "Sairey." "I do not quite see how it affects you. Why are you glad?" "_Why am I glad?_" replies the younger man, with a lightening eye. "For the same reason that I am glad that Vandyke painted that picture"--pointing to it--"or that Shakespeare wrote _As You Like It_. The world is the richer by them all three." But to this poetic and flattering analogy, Jim's only answer is a surly "Humph!" CHAPTER V. "There are no more by-path meadows where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. You may think you had a conscience and believed in God; but what is conscience to a wife?.... To marry is to domesticate the Recording Angel. Once you are married, there is nothing left for you--not even suicide--but to be good." There is no particular reason why Burgoyne should not impart to his companion what he knows--after all it is not very much--about their two countrywomen. Upon reflection he had told himself this, and conquered a reluctance, that he cannot account for, to mentioning their name; and to relating the story of those shadowy idyllic two months of his life, which form all of it that has ever come into contact with theirs. So that by the time--some thirty-six hours later--when they reach Florence, the younger man is in possession of as much information about the objects of their common interest as it is in the power of the elder one to impart.