"You never tried to help it. No; although it was a foreign land, and I don't speak French--not but what I know a good deal more of it than some people who give themselves airs about it--though I don't speak their nasty gibberish, still you let them take me away, and never cared how I was ever to find you again. In a strange country, too! But I've no doubt that that's what you wished: yes, you'd have been glad enough to have got rid of me in that cowardly manner. If I could only know your secret thoughts, Caudle, that's what you brought me here for, to lose me. And after the wife I've been to you! "What are you crying out? "FOR MERCY'S SAKE? "Yes; a great deal you know about mercy! Else you'd never have suffered me to be twisted into that room. To be searched, indeed! As if I'd anything smuggled about me. Well, I will say it, after the way in which I've been used, if you'd the proper feelings of a man, you wouldn't sleep again for six months. Well, I know there was nobody but women there; but that's nothing to do with it. I'm sure, if I'd been taken up for picking pockets, they couldn't have used me worse. To be treated so--and 'specially by one's own sex!--it's THAT that aggravates me. "And that's all you can say? "WHAT COULD YOU DO? "Why, break open the door; I'm sure you must have heard my voice: you shall never make me believe you couldn't hear that. Whenever I shall sew the strings on again, I can't tell. If they didn't turn me out like a ship in a storm, I'm a sinner! And you laughed! "YOU DIDN'T LAUGH? "Don't tell me; you laugh when you don't know anything about it; but I do. "And a pretty place you have brought me to! A most respectable place, I must say! Where the women walk about without any bonnets to their heads, and the fish-girls with their bare legs--well, you don't catch me eating any fish while I'm here. "WHY NOT? "Why not,--do you think I'd encourage people of that sort? "What do you say? "GOOD-NIGHT? "It's no use your saying that--I can't go to sleep so soon as you can. Especially with a door that has such a lock as that to it. How do we know who may come in? What? "ALL THE LOCKS ARE BAD IN FRANCE? "The more shame for you to bring me to such a place, then. It only shows how you value me. "Well, I dare say you are tired. I am! But then, see what I've gone through. Well, we won't quarrel in a barbarous country. We won't do that. Caudle, dear,--what's the French for lace? I know it, only I forget it. The French for lace, love? What? "DENTELLE? "Now, you're not deceiving me? "YOU NEVER DECEIVED ME YET? "Oh! don't say that. There isn't a married man in this blessed world can put his hand upon his heart in bed and say that. French for lace, dear? Say it again. "DENTELLE? "Ha! Dentelle! Good-night, dear. Dentelle! Den-telle."