“Do you like to see me insulted, mamma?” she said, when Mrs. Bates followed. “How can you endure that vulgar fellow? and how dares he show his insolence to me?” “My dear,” said Mrs. Bates, “you must not be unreasonable. He did not mean to be insolent. If we have not the refinements you have been used to, Nancy, still you mustn’t forget the advantages of your old home--” “Advantages!” Nancy murmured under her breath, but pride kept down the cry. Had not she sacrificed her life for these advantages, cast her own existence to the winds? She went to bed miserable, and cried herself to sleep. This was but a melancholy beginning to the new life. When she heard afterwards the arrangements that Arthur had made for her comfort, her first impulse was to accept nothing. “I am no wife to him,” she cried, “and why should I take his money? I will not take his money. What am I to Arthur now that he should maintain me? It is like taking charity.” But here Mr. Bates came in, who had a certain authority in such matters, if not a great deal of influence in other ways. Mr. Bates would stand no nonsense. It was bad enough that the responsibility of his daughter, and her behaviour as a married woman separated from her husband, should fall upon her parents; but her support certainly should not, of that he was clear. And Nancy, fresh from all these conflicts and miseries, was cowed before her father, and dared not resist him, notwithstanding all her efforts to hold her own. She who had not yielded to Arthur’s love and generosity, yielded to the tax-collector’s practical decidedness. She could not help herself. And after a few days’ growing wretchedness in this “home,” for which she had sacrificed so much, Nancy was glad to retire to the villa with the sensible Matilda for her companion, and begin again as she best could in such changed and fallen circumstances the career so perversely cut short. At least it was a relief to get away from the stuffy parlour, and the rum-and-water, and the grocer’s wit and courtship--all of which, heaven forgive her, she had called upon her husband to endure. * * * * *