She never can help smiling at the thought of Mrs. Evans's wedding-dress, any more than Charles Lamb's Cheshire cats can help laughing when they think of Cheshire being a County Palatine. She is smiling broadly now. Well, if her smile come seldom, there is no doubt that it is a very agreeable one when it does come. What sort of thing could he say that would be likely to bring it back? 'I did not know that people were ever married in black.' She shakes her head oracularly. 'No more they are!' She is smiling still. (What a delightful wide mouth! and what _dents de jeune chien_!) 'It is made out of an old Geneva gown of his?' suggests Talbot wildly. Again she shakes her nut-brown head. 'Wrong.' 'I have it!' he cries eagerly. 'I know more about the subject than you think; it has been dyed.' The mirth has retired from her mouth, and now lurks in the tail of her bright eye. 'You did not find that out for yourself,' she says distrustfully; 'some one told you.' 'Upon my honour, it is my own unassisted discovery,' replies he solemnly, and then they both laugh. Finding herself betrayed into such a harmony of light-hearted merriment with him, Margaret pulls herself up. After all, she must not forget that there is a medium between the stiff politeness she had planned and this hail-fellow-well-met-ness into which she finds herself somehow sliding. Nor does his next sentence, though innocently enough meant, at all conduce to make her again relax her austerity. 'I should not allow my wife to dye her wedding-gown black.' His wife! How dare he allude to such a person? He, with his illegal Betty ogling and double-entendre-ing and posturing opposite! How dare he allude to marriage at all? He to whom that sacred tie is a derision! She has frozen up again. Without having the faintest suspicion of the cause, he is wonderingly aware of the result. Is it possible that she can object to his introducing his hypothetical wife into the consideration? She is more than welcome to retort upon him with her supposititious husband. He will give her the chance. 'Would you?' 'Would I what?' 'Dye your wedding-gown black?' She knows that she would not. She knows that she would lay it up in lavender, and tenderly show the yellowed skirt and outlandish sleeves to her grandchildren forty years hence. But in the pleasure of contradicting him, truth is worsted. 'Yes.' 'You would?' in a tone of surprise. She must repeat her fib. 'Yes.' 'Well, I should not have thought it.' He would like her to ask him why he would not have thought it; but she does not oblige him. 'I think it would show a want of sentiment,' pursues he perseveringly. 'Yes?' Good heavens! If she has not got back again to her monosyllable! 'Do not you?' 'No.' 'I should think it would bring ill-luck, should not you?' 'No.' 'Should not you, really?'