“It is too true, Milly—I know it! Would I could have any doubt upon the subject! While I was shut up here, not allowed to enjoy myself in society, but passing long tiresome days of seclusion and dullness, and thinking he was attending to his duties, his parliamentary duties, the good of the nation, the welfare of his country, he was carrying on this shameful affair. During my confinement, when I was ill and suffering, he was amusing himself in the company of this woman. Oh! it makes me sick to think of! I have borne it all—I have done my duty—I have not complained—I have not reproached him—I have sat up with him night after night in his illness—I have not murmured? And now it is he who reproaches me, for at length trying to make myself happy without his affections, when he chooses to lavish them upon a shameless creature! He is angry with me, because everybody does not think me as little agreeable and as little charming as he does! He would wish me to be odious and ugly, to justify himself!” “I am sure, my lady, nobody that knows you can think you odious or ugly.” “It is not my fault, if people will think me otherwise.” “Certainly, my lady; one could not expect that gentlefolks should not think you a good, kind, pleasant lady, as you are; nor one would not wish them not to think so; but——” “But what, Milly?” “Why, my lady, though my lord may have done what he should not have done, still, my lady, you are a married woman.” “I know that, Milly; and I would rather die than ever be led to forget it. If I had allowed the dandies to make love to me—if I had given any one of them reason to imagine I had the least preference for him—if I had in any way deserved such treatment——” “And do you think, my lady, you would be any the happier if you felt you did deserve it?” CHAPTER XV. So as there is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer; for there is no such flatterer as a man’s self, and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man’s self, as the liberty of a friend.—LORD BACON’_s Essays_. Lucy stopped short. There was something in this simple answer of Milly’s that overthrew all the chain of argument with which she was going to bewilder herself. She looked back, and was obliged to confess to herself how little real enjoyment she had felt from all the dissipation of the last season. “Happiness, Milly! I have done with happiness for ever. All I can now look for is amusement.”