“Be shocked if you like. It's very proper, perhaps, that you should be shocked; but nature has endowed me with strong nerves or coarse feelings, whichever you like to call them, and consequently I can talk of these things with as little intermixture of sentiment as I would employ in discussing a protested bill. Lucy herself is not deficient in this cool quality, and we have discussed the social contract styled Marriage with a charming unanimity of opinion. Indeed, when I have thought over the marvellous agreement of our sentiments, I have been actually amazed why we could not live together without hating each other.” “I pity her--from the bottom of my heart I pity her.” “So do I, mother. I pity her, because I pity myself. It was a stupid bargain for each of us. I thought I was marrying an angel with sixty thousand pounds. She fancied she was getting a hero, with a peerage in the distance. Each made a 'bad book.' It is deuced hard, however,” continued he, in a fiercer strain, “if one must go on backing the horse that you know will lose, staking your money where you see you cannot win. My wife and myself awoke from our illusions years ago; but to please the world, to gratify that amiable thing called Society, we must go on still, just as if we believed all that we know and have proved to be rotten falsehoods. Now I ask you, mother, is not this rather hard? Would n't it be hard for a good-tempered, easy-going fellow? And is it not more than hard for a hasty, peevish, irritable dog like myself? We know and see that we are bad company for each other, but you--I mean the world--you insist that we should go on quarrelling to the end, as if there was anything edifying in the spectacle of our mutual dislike.” “Too much of this. I beseech you, drop the subject, and talk of something else.” “I declare, mother, if there was any one I could be frank and outspoken with on this theme, I believed it to be yourself. You have had 'your losses' too, and know what it is to be unhappily mated.” “Whatever I may have suffered, I have not lost self-respect,” said she, haughtily. “Heigho!” cried he, wearily, “I always find that my opinions place me in a minority, and so it must ever be while the world is the hypocritical thing we see it. Oh dear, if people could only vote by ballot, I'd like to see marriage put to the test.” “What did Sir William say about my going to the picnic?” asked she, suddenly. “He said you were quite right to obtain as many attentions as you could from the Castle, on the same principle that the vicar's wife stipulated for the sheep in the picture,--'as many as the painter would put in for nothing.'” “So that he is firmly determined not to resign?” “Most firmly; nor will he be warned by the example of the well-bred dog, for he sees, or he might see, all the preparations on foot for kicking him out.” “You don't think they would compel him to resign?”