“A reason which was much against my will,” said Evelyn, telling the story of her distress, to which her friend listened very gravely. “I should take care not to meet him again,” said Lady Leighton, with a cloud on her brow. “You listen to him out of pure pity, but weak and ailing as he is, it would be sweet to his vanity to compromise a woman even now.” “I do not understand what you mean,” said Evelyn; “he could not compromise me, if that is it, by anything he could do, were he all that he has ever been.” “You don’t know what your husband might think,” said her friend; “he wouldn’t like it. He might have every confidence in you--but a man of Ned Saumarez’s character, and an old lover, and all that--he might say----” “My husband,” said Mrs. Rowland, feeling the blood mount to her head, “has no such ideas in his mind. He neither knows anything about Mr. Saumarez’s character, nor would he even if he did know. You mistake my feeling altogether. It is not anything about my husband that distresses me--it is the trust he wants me to undertake of his children.” “Oh, you may make yourself easy about that, Evelyn. That was only a blind. It is little he thinks about his children. He’ll get you to meet him and to talk to him, professedly about them--oh, I don’t doubt that! but that’s not what he means. You don’t know Ned Saumarez so well as I do,” cried Lady Leighton, putting out her hand to stop an outcry of indignation; “you don’t know the world so well as I do; you have been out of it for years, and you always were an innocent, and never did understand--” “Understand! that a man who is dying by inches should have--such ideas. A man on the edge of the grave--with a servant, a nurse, looking after him as if he were a child.” “It’s very sad, my dear, especially the last, which is incredible, I allow. How a man like that can think that a woman would--But they do all the same. You might be led yourself by pity, or perhaps by a little lingering feeling--or--well, well, I will not say that, I don’t want to make you angry--perhaps by a little vanity then, if I may say such a word.” “Madeline, I think you know far too much of the world.” “Perhaps,” said Lady Leighton, not without a little self-complacence. “I have had a great deal of experience in life.” “And too little,” said Evelyn, “of honest meaning and truth.” “Oh, as for that! but if you think you will find truth or honest meaning, my dear, in Ned Saumarez, you will be very far wrong; and if he can lead you into a mess with your husband, or get you talked about----” “He will never get me into a mess with my husband, you may be certain of that, Madeline.” “Oh, if you will take your own way, I cannot help it,” cried Lady Leighton. “I have done all I can. And now come down to lunch. At all events we must not quarrel, you and I.”