which made it difficult for me to bow my own will completely to yours, to substitute your judgment unrepiningly for my own. Happily no occasion has yet arisen to oblige me to have recourse to Mr. Warren's advice or assistance. I have needed neither. All external matters, with which alone he could have any concern, have passed along very smoothly, nor can I, at present, foresee any possible contingency in which it would be necessary for me to apply to him; should any such arise, you may rest assured that I shall strictly conform to your instructions. It was rather hard for me, my dear husband, to be told by that one friend of yours, concerning whom we are not entirely of one opinion, that my letters to you were to pass through his hands. Did I not know that you are quite above such a futile and foolish exercise of power, such experimenting in the pliability of the human will, had we not often discussed the contemptible folly of the patient Griselda, and quite made up our minds as to what we thought of Geraint, I might have supposed for a moment that you had imposed this restriction upon me as a sort of test, as well as a significant hint to me that thus far and no farther I might go in our domestic relations. I might have thought you meant to say, 'I like Warren, you don't; you will have to give in to my liking.' This would have been a calculation and an act of a domestic tyrant; therefore an impossibility to you. I accept the restriction in a perfectly frank and candid spirit, and absolute loyalty towards you. Some day you will perhaps tell me--when you find that I am capable of being more of a companion to you than I have hitherto been--what is the precise nature of your present business, and the exact character of the complication which has rendered it necessary that my letters should not go direct from your own house in New York to your own address in London; and I have no doubt that I shall entirely recognise the force of the reason. If, however, you should never tell me, if for any reason conceivable or unconceivable by me it should remain impossible for you to confide this to me, I shall be perfectly satisfied that the motive not to be explained is one which does no discredit to you, and is wholly uninfluenced with any slight to me. And now, dear Alston, I pass from the subject either for ever or until such time as you choose to resume it. I wonder if you will be provoked with my pertinacity if I tell you that I have discovered that Mr. Warren has very few such partial friends as you are. The fact is, he is not much liked by men, and he is, generally speaking, as much disliked by their wives as he is by me. I think no polish of manner, no external surface, brightness, or gallantry of that kind which, when looked into by a keen-eyed woman, is much more insulting than complimentary, has ever enabled him to conceal from women in general the sentiment which all right-minded women must resent, and which would render neglect, even rudeness, from