“Of course not,” Miss Desmond replied promptly; “but I don’t see that you need make yourself so very unhappy about his conduct. You will have a formal separation, I suppose. Your papa, or your papa’s solicitors, will manage that, no doubt; and you will live quietly in a smaller house than this. You will not be able to go so much into society, you know; for it is so difficult for a woman who is separated from her husband to escape scandal, however careful she may be,” Julia added, with considerable satisfaction. It is so nice to sit in the dust and mingle our sympathetic tears with those of the fallen powers who have lately queened it over us. Maude’s sobs redoubled. “Society!” she exclaimed. “I hate society! Yes, it’s no use talking, Julia. I know what you’re going to say about my going out to three parties a night, and so on; but I don’t like it--nobody likes it. They get into the whirlpool, and there they are. If you go to Mrs. A.’s Thursday, you must go to Lady B.’s Friday, or you offend her; and if you go once, you must go on going, or it seems as if you didn’t like the people you met; and then, if you don’t ask people, you are accused of dropping them; and if you ask strange people, you are accused of picking them up; and if you always ask the same people, your parties are called slow; and if you ask different people, you are called capricious. I am so tired of the world, Julia,” sighed Mrs. Tredethlyn. “When I drive any distance to dinner on an autumn evening, I always envy the people who live in little villas, and drink tea at seven o’clock in pretty parlours that I can see in the firelight. They seem _so_ happy. I never hear a muffin-bell--don’t laugh, Julia; but there _is_ something peculiar in a muffin-bell--without thinking how hollow my life is, compared to the lives of the people who eat the muffins. And then I fancy that I should have been so much happier in a pretty little cottage in St. John’s Wood, with a tiny, tiny back-garden sloping down to the canal, and a still tinier garden in front for Floss to bark in. I used to think sometimes,” continued Maude dropping her voice and speaking with some slight embarrassment, “that Francis and I would get to understand each other better by-and-by, and that we should lead quite a Darby-and-Joan sort of life, doing a great deal of good, and going out much less. But, of course, that hope is quite gone now. I can never endure his society again. I could never trust him. And oh, Julia, I did trust him so implicitly! I had such a belief in his goodness that I despised myself for not being better worthy of him. And to think that he should deceive me so cruelly; that he should have been deceiving me all along, leading a wicked life amongst wicked people for his own pleasure; when I fancied that he was driven from his home by my indifference, and reproached myself so bitterly for being wanting in my duty to him.”