`To excuse my own failings, to be sure. Do you think I'll bear all the burden of my sins on my own shoulders, as long as there's another ready to help me, with none of her own to carry?'

`There is no such one on earth,' said she seriously; and then, taking his hand from her head, she kissed it with an air of genuine devotion, and tripped away to the door.

`What now?' said he. `Where are you going?'

`To tidy my hair,' she answered, smiling through her disordered locks: `you've made it all come down.'

`Off with you then!--An excellent little woman,' he remarked when she was gone, `but a thought too soft-- she almost melts in one's hands. I positively think I ill-use her sometimes, when I've taken too much--but I can't help it, for she never complains, either at the time or after. I suppose she doesn't mind it.'

`I can enlighten you on that subject, Mr. Hattersley,' said I: `she does mind it; and some other things she minds still more, which, yet, you may never hear her complain of.'

`How do you know?--does she complain to you?' demanded he, with a sudden spark of fury ready to burst into a flame if I should answer `Yes.'

`No,' I replied; `but I have known her longer and studied her more closely than you have done.--And I can tell you, Mr. Hattersley, that Milicent loves you more than you deserve, and that you have it in your power to make her very happy, instead of which you are her evil genius, and, I will venture to say, there is not a single day passes in which you do not inflict upon her some pang that you might spare her if you would.'

`Well--it's not my fault,' said he, gazing carelessly up at the ceiling and plunging his hands into his pockets: `if my ongoings don't suit her, she should tell me so.'

`Is she not exactly the wife you wanted? Did you not tell Mr. Huntingdon you must have one that would submit to anything without a murmur, and never blame you, whatever you did?'

`True, but we shouldn't always have what we want: it spoils the best of us, doesn't it? How can I help playing the deuce when I see it's all one to her whether I behave like a Christian or like a scoundrel such as nature made me?--and how can I help teazing her when she's so invitingly meek and mim-- when she lies down like a spaniel at my feet and never so much as squeaks to tell me that's enough?'

`If you are a tyrant by nature, the temptation is strong, I allow; but no generous mind delights to oppress the weak, but rather to cherish and protect.'

`I don't oppress her; but it's so confounded flat to be always cherishing and protecting;--and then how can I tell that I am oppressing her when she "melts away and makes no sign?"' I sometimes think she has no feeling at all; and then I go on till she cries--and that satisfies me.

`Then you do delight to oppress her.'

`I don't, I tell you!--only when I'm in a bad humour--or a particularly good one, and want to afflict for the pleasure of comforting; or when she looks flat and wants shaking up a bit. And sometimes, she provokes me by crying for nothing, and won't tell me what it's for; and then, I allow, it enrages me past bearing-- especially, when I'm not my own man.'

`As is no doubt generally the case on such occasions,' said I. `But in future, Mr. Hattersley, when you see her looking flat or crying for "nothing" (as you call it), ascribe it all to yourself: be assured it is something you have done amiss, or your general misconduct that distresses her.'