Besides, now, she had at times a new feeling--a wish to have her husband all to herself. She ceased to need the "shadowy third"--the invisible barricade against total dual solitude made by aunts or children. She would have been glad sometimes to send them all away, and spend a quiet evening hour, such as the last one, alone with Dr. Grey. It was so pleasant to talk to him--so comfortable. The comfort of it lasted in her heart all through her elaborate dressing, which was rather more weariness to her than to most young women of her age. Letitia assisted thereat--poor Titia who, being sent for, had crept down to her step-mother's room, very humble and frightened, and received a few tender, serious words--not many, for the white face was sodden with crying, and there was a sullen look upon it which not all Christian's gentleness could chase away. Phillis had discovered her absence, and had punished her; not with whipping, that was forbidden, but with some of the innumerable nursery tyrannies which Phillis called government. And Titia evidently thought, with the suspiciousness of all weak, cowed creatures, that Mrs. Grey must have had some hand in it--that she had broken her promise, and betrayed her to this punishment. She stood aloof, poor little girl, tacitly doing as she was bidden, and acquiescing in every thing, with her thin lips pressed into that hopeless line, or now and then opening to give vent to sharp, unchildlike speeches, so exceedingly like Aunt Henrietta's. "Those are very pretty bracelets, but yours are not nearly so big as poor mamma's, and you don't wear half so many." Was it that inherent feminine quality, tact or spite, according as it is used, which teaches women to find out, and either avoid or wound one another's sore places, which made the little girl so often refer to "poor mamma?" Or had she been taught to do it? Christian could not tell. But it had to be borne, and she was learning how to bear it, she answered kindly. "Probably I do wear fewer ornaments than your mamma did, for she was rich, and I was poor. Indeed, I have no ornaments to wear except what your papa has given me." "He gives you lots of things, doesn't he? Every thing you have?" "Yes." "Do you like his doing it?" "Very much indeed." "Then was that the reason you married him? Aunt Henrietta said it was." Christian's blood boiled. And yet Letitia only repeated what she had been told. "My child," she said, feeling that now was the time to speak, and that the truth must be spoken even to a child, "your Aunt Henrietta makes a great mistake. She says and believes what is not true. I married your papa because I"--(oh that she could have said "loved him!")--"I thought him the best man in the world. And so he is, as we all know well. Don't we, Arthur?" "Hurrah! Three cheers for papa! The jolliest papa that ever was!" cried Arthur from the sofa, where, by his own special desire, he lay watching the end of the toilet.