'This is a tragedy, not a farce,' Hazel said, knitting her brows. 'Leave fashions of speech a one side. John Charteris, with all his faults, would never grow tired of you, Josephine—if you gave him half a chance to help it; but Stuart Nightingale _will_.' 'I am jolly tired of _him_,' cried Josephine with a burst. 'Charteris and I can't live happy together. I know better. And it will be worse now he has lost his money. I would rather die, Hazel. And I tell you, he is tired of me—and I should think he would. If you knew the life I've led him, you would think so too. You needn't talk to me. I would rather die right off, than go on living with him; and it would kill me anyhow, and I'm not going to die that way.' 'There is honour in dying at one's post,' said Wych Hazel thoughtfully,—'even if it came to that. But to sail away on a pleasure trip, with all one's dearest friends praying that the ship might go down in mid-seas!—' Josephine sat still, looking with odd impassiveness into the fire; then she remarked in the same way, 'My dearest friends don't do much praying. I guess they won't drown me.' 'You may kill them,' said Hazel. 'Imagine people watching Annabella and saying 'Poor thing!'—'What has become of the other sister?'—'O you mustn't ask about her. You know'—and then heads will draw together. And your mother will see the shrugs and catch the hints.' 'What makes you care?' said Josephine, without moving a muscle. 'I believe you must have liked him a little yourself.' 'I liked him such a very little,' said Wych Hazel, 'that a year ago I cut up his heart into bits. He has patched them together again,— but the stitches shew.' 'Stuart was poor,' said Josephine. 'I knew it all the time.' Wych Hazel's brows drew together, but the words got no further notice. 'Josephine, you married for diamonds. I will give you diamonds every week for a year, if you will go back to your place and stay there.' 'I don't care for diamonds,' said Josephine very coldly. 'What _do_ you care for?'—the grave young eyes looked up eagerly. 'Not much'—said Josephine drearily, and the words were inexpressibly sad from such young lips. 'But I am not going to live in that prison in 40th street and with that jailer Charteris any more!' 'Josephine, you could change all that. There is no prison—and no jailer—for any woman of whom it is true: "The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her." '