“And that part will be punctually performed,” said Mr Burgrave indulgently, gazing in admiration into her animated face. “I know that you will remember my foolish prejudices, and gratify them to the utmost extent of my desires, if not of my purse. That is all I ask of you--to be always beautiful.” In her bitter disappointment Mabel could have burst into tears. “Oh, you won’t understand! you won’t understand!” she cried. “I don’t want piles of clothes; I don’t want everything softened and shaded down for me. I want to be a helpmate to my husband, as Georgia is to Dick.” “Dear child, I am sorry you have returned to this subject,” said Mr Burgrave, taken aback. “I thought we had threshed it out fully long ago.” “Ah, but we can speak more freely now!” she cried. “Don’t you see that I should hate to be stuck up on a pedestal for you to look at, or to be a kind of pet, that you might amuse yourself smilingly with my foolish little interests out of office hours? I want you to tell me things, and let us talk them over together, as Dick and Georgia do.” “I know they do,” said Mr Burgrave, trying to smile. “The walls here are so thin that I hear them at it every evening. A prolonged growl is your brother soliloquising, and a brief interlude of higher tones is Mrs North giving her opinion of affairs. It is a little embarrassing for me, knowing as I do that my doings are almost certainly the subject of the conversation.” “Well, and if they are?” cried Mabel. “It is only because you and Dick don’t understand one another that he and Georgia criticise you. Now think about this very matter of the frontier. If you would only talk to me, and tell me what you thought was the proper thing to be done, I could talk to them, and you might find out that your views were not so much opposed after all. Do try, please; oh, do! I would give anything to bring you to an agreement.” Mr Burgrave’s brow was clouded as he looked into her eager eyes. “Am I to understand,” he said, with dreadful distinctness, “that your brother and Mrs North are trying to make use of you to extract information from me? No, I will not suspect your brother. No man would stoop to employ such an expedient--so degrading to my future wife, so affronting to myself. It is Mrs North’s doing.” Mabel, who had listened in horrified silence, sprang to her feet at this point as if stung. “I think it will be as well for me to return you this,” she said, laying upon the table the ring of “finest Europe make,” which the Commissioner had been fain to purchase from the chief jeweller in the bazaar as a makeshift until the diamond hoop for which he had sent to Bombay could arrive. “You have grossly insulted both Georgia and me, and--and I never wish to speak to you again.”