With how Spartan a completeness women can hide the shootings and quiverings of mental pain, and of bodily pain too, when the motive is sufficient! Under this latter they are often clamorous, to be sure; but the demonstration expresses not want of patience, but the feminine yearning for compassion. "I fancy nothing would please the young rogue Vivian better. I wish I were half so sure of her. You girls are so unaccountable, so fanciful, and--don't be angry--so uncertain." "Well, I suppose, as you say, we must only have patience, and leave the matter in the hands of Time, who settles most things pretty well." She raised her eyes, and fancied she saw Grace Maubray at the same moment withdraw hers from her face. Lady May was talking from the end of the table with Mr. Longcluse. "Your neighbour who is talking to Lady May is a Mr. Longcluse?" "Yes." "He is a City notability; but oddly, I never happened to see him till this evening. Do you think there is something curious in his appearance?" "Yes, a little, perhaps. Don't you?" "So odd that he makes my blood run cold," said Uncle David, with a shrug and a little laugh. "Seriously, I mean unpleasantly odd. What is Lady May talking about? Yes--I thought so--that horrid murder at the 'Saloon Tavern.' For so good-natured a person, she has the most bloodthirsty tastes I know of; she's always deep in some horror." "My brother Dick told me that Mr. Longcluse made a speech there." "Yes, so I heard; and I think he said what is true enough. London is growing more and more insecure; and that certainly was a most audacious murder. People make money a little faster, that is true; but what is the good of money, if their lives are not their own? It is quite true that there are streets in London, which I remember as safe as this room, through which no one suspected of having five pounds in his pocket could now walk without a likelihood of being garotted." "How dreadful!" said Alice, and Uncle David laughed a little at her horror. "It is too true, my dear. But, to pass to pleasanter subjects, when do you mean to choose among the young fellows, and present me to a new nephew?" said Uncle David. "Do you fancy I would tell anyone if I knew?" she answered, laughing. "How is it that you men, who are always accusing us weak women of thinking of nothing else, can never get the subject of matrimony out of your heads? Now, uncle, as you and I may talk confidentially, and at our ease, I'll tell you two things. I like my present spinster life very well--I should like it better, I think, if it were in the country; but town or country, I don't think I should ever like a married life. I don't think I'm fit for command." "Command! I thought the prayer-book said something about obeying, on the contrary," said Uncle David. "You know what I mean. I'm not fit to rule a household; and I am afraid I am a little idle, and I should not like to have it to do--and so I could never do it well."