"I daresay. Try yourself to persuade her to leave me. She won't, you know. But why should you bore yourself to death staying on here? You don't like it, and nobody----" "Wants me, you mean, Philip." "I never said anything so dashed straightforward. I am not a chap of that kind. But what I say is, it's a shame to keep you hanging on, disturbed in your rest and all that sort of thing. That noisy beggar, Dismar, that came in with us last night must have woke you up with his idiotic bellowing." "It doesn't matter for me; but Elinor, Philip. It does matter for your wife. If her rest is broken it will react upon her in every way. I wish you would consent to forego those visitors in the middle of the night." He looked at her with a sort of satirical indifference. "Sorry I can't oblige you," he said. "When a girl's friends fork out handsomely a man has some reason for paying a little attention. But when there's nothing, or next to nothing, on her side, why of course he must pick up a little where he can, as much for her sake as his own." "Pick up a little!" said Mrs. Dennistoun. "I wish you wouldn't repeat what I say like that. It makes a fellow nervous. Yes, of course, a man that knows what he's about does pick up a little. About your movements, however. I advise you to take my advice and go back to your snug little house. It would kill me in a week, but I know it suits you. Why hang on for Nell? She's as well as can be, and there's a few things that it would be good for us to do." "Which you cannot do while I am here? Is that what you mean, Philip?" "I never saw any good in being what the French call brutal," he said, "I hate making a woman cry, or that sort of thing. But you're a woman of sense, and I'm sure you must see that a young couple like Nell and me, who have our way to make in the world----" "You know it was for her sake entirely that I came here." "Yes, oh, yes. To do coddling and that sort of thing--which she doesn't require a bit; but if I must be brutal you know there's things of much consequence we could do if----" "If what, Philip?" "Well," he said, turning on his heel, "if we had the house to ourselves." This was the influence Mrs. Dennistoun hoped to acquire by the sacrifice of her two thousand pounds! When he was gone, instead of covering her face as she had done when John left her, Mrs. Dennistoun stared into the vacant air for a minute and then she burst into a laugh. It was not a mirthful laugh, it may be supposed, or harmonious, and it startled her as she heard it pealing into the silence. Whether it was loud enough to wake Elinor up-stairs, or whether she was already close by and heard it, I cannot tell, but she came in with a little tap at the door and a smile, a somewhat anxious and forced smile, it is true, upon her face. "What is the joke?" she said. "I heard you laugh, and I thought I might come in and share the fun. Somehow, we don't have so much fun as we used to have. What is it, mamma?"