“Oh yes, you do; you understand as well as I who suffer. My wife and I love each other dearly. If she have a fit of the vapours, or an aching tooth, I am wretched. But we have never been companions. The things that she loves are charmless for me. She is enchanted with people from whom I run away. Is it companionship, do you think, for me to look on while she walks a coranto or tosses shuttlecocks with De Malfort? Roxalana is as much my companion when I admire her on the stage from my seat in the pit. There are times when my wife seems no nearer to me than a beautiful picture. If I sit in a corner, and listen to her pretty babble about the last fan she bought at the Middle Exchange, or the last witless comedy she saw at the King’s Theatre, is that companionship, think you? I may be charmed to-day—as I was charmed ten years ago—with the silvery sweetness of her voice, with the graceful turn of her head, the white roundness of her throat. At least I am constant. There is no change in her or in me. We are just as near and just as far apart as when the priest joined our hands at St. Eustache. And it must be so to the end, I suppose; and I think the fault is in me. I am out of joint with the world I live in. I cannot set myself in tune with their new music. I look back, and remember, and regret; yet hardly know why I remember or what I regret.” Again a silence, briefer than the last, and he went on:— “Do you think it strange that I talk so freely—to you—who are scarce more than a child, less learned than Henriette in worldly knowledge? It is a comfort sometimes to talk of one’s self; of what one has missed as well as of what one has. And you have such an air of being wise beyond your years; wise in all thoughts that are not of the world—thoughts of things of which there is no truck at the Exchanges; which no one buys or sells at Abingdon fair. And you are so near allied to me—a sister! I never had a sister of my own blood, Angela. I was an only child. Solitude was my portion. I lived alone with my tutor and _gouvernante_—a poor relation of my mother’s—alone in a house that was mostly deserted, for Lord and Lady Fareham were in London with the King, till the troubles brought the Court to Christchurch, and them to Chilton. I have had few in whom to confide. And you—remember what you have been to me, and do not wonder if I trust you more than others. Thou didst go down to the very grave with me, didst pluck me out of the pit. Corruption could not touch a creature so lovely and so innocent Thou didst walk unharmed through the charnel-house. Remembering this, as I ever must remember, can you wonder that you are nearer to me than all the rest of the world?”