“Yes, I am three-and-twenty--you don't look thirty.” “I feel it, though; few fellows have had so much trouble as I have. Your life has been all pleasure.” “If a man really loves a woman he is always right to marry her. Why should we suppose that a woman may not reform--that true love may not raise her? I was talking to a novelist the other day; he told me thestory of a book he is writing. It is about a woman who leaves the husband she has never loved for the man she adores; she goes away with him, he marries her, and she sinks lower and lower, until she becomes a common prostitute.” “You are quite mistaken. I am sure that when you see the missis--” “My dear fellow, pray do not misunderstand me. I would not for worlds. I am only telling you about a book, if you will only listen. I told him that I thought the story would be ten times as interesting if, instead of being degraded, the woman were raised by the love of the man who took her away from her husband. He made the husband a snivelling little creature, and the lover good-looking--that's the old game. I would have made the lover insignificant and the husband good-looking. Nevertheless she loved the lover better. I know of nothing more noble than for a man to marry the woman he loves, and to raise her by the force of his love; he could teach her, instruct her. Nellie will never forget me. I gave her a religion, I taught her and explained to her the whole of the Catholic faith--” “I hope you won't try to convert my sisters.” “You do pull me up so! Don't you understand that I was very young then? I was only twenty, not much more; besides, I was engaged to Nellie.” “Come back to what we were talking about.” “Well, I have said that if you love her I believe you are quite right to marry her. But do you love her?” “Yes, I do; how many times more do you want me to say I do?” “Of _course_ if you are going to be rude--” “No--you understand what I mean, don't you? I am very fond of the missis; if I weren't I shouldn't marry, that goes without saying, but one likes to have things settled. I have been with her now more thantwo years. I've thought it out. There's nothing like having things settled. I'm sure I'm right.” The young men looked at each other in silence--Frank quite at a loss; he could nowise enter into the feelings of a man whom an undue sense of order and regularity compelled to marry his mistress, as it did to waste half his life in copying letters and making entries in a diary. “Then why did you consult me?” he said, for he came to the point sharply when his brain was not muddled with sentiment. “I am not heir to an entailed estate, like you.” “I am not heir to an entailed estate. Mount Rorke might marry to-morrow.”