"So well he might, my dear. Susan informed me that he had to clean all the boots, sometimes forty pairs a day, in the season. He was the most oppressed of all his wife's victims." "Why didn't he assert himself, then?" "Oh, Hilda, you should have seen him! Poor little soul! He was one of those men who make you feel it to be so tragic that they should be men and yet like that. Coventry Patmore makes his plain heroine talk of the sadness-- "That God should e'er Make women, and not make them fair". But the tragedy of men like poor little Mr. Tatlow is sadder still." "How did he show his sympathy?" I asked. "Oh, poor little soul! by facing his wife for me with the spirit of a lion. He was miserably afraid of her, yet he did that. And he apologized to me with a delicacy and good feeling that showed he had the heart of a gentleman in his poor little frame." "He could do nothing?" "No, only get himself into hot water by his championship of me. I believe the woman was horribly violent when she was angry. She vented all her violence on him, for though she was savagely angry with me she said nothing. I only knew it by her glance of malevolence when she thought herself unnoticed." "And you slept a month in that dog-hole?" "No, I'm ashamed to say I didn't. I'm not made of the martyr-stuff. I had been ten days or so in it when Lucy, the chamber-maid, told Miss Dahlia Warner, an American who was staying in the house, about my habitation. Miss Warner was very rich, very pretty, and very spirited. She came down and saw the place for herself. 'Now, why did you do it, Mrs. Hazeldine?' she asked; 'don't you know it was self-murder? Look at yourself in the glass!' I did so, and saw a very white face and very big eyes. 'Besides, you are encouraging that wretch to treat some other helpless, poor creature in just the same way.' "Then I burst out crying, and she suddenly put her arms about me affectionately. 'There, I am worrying you, you poor little thing!' she cried; 'as if you had not had enough to bear already. Come up to my room and tell me all about it. The woman is out, but if she were not, she wouldn't dare to question me." So I went with her, and, being broken down by her sympathy, I told her everything. When I had finished, she said to me, 'There! Can you get your things together in a quarter of an hour? Yes, I am sure you can, for that kind creature downstairs will help you. You are coming with me to the Cecil as my guest for a fortnight, and as long afterwards as you will stay.' And so she carried me off. She returned later on for her own luggage, paid Mrs. Tatlow for her board, and gave that good lady a stinging little bit of her mind. The woman was obsequious to her, for her main business is with Americans, and she dreaded the mischief Miss Warner might do her. But for all that she kept my pretty things." "Your pretty things, Freda?"