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"Do you positively swear?" she asked with intensity as she helped him. Then without waiting for his answer: "You have the common charity to US, I suppose, to see the position you'd put us in. Fancy Edward!" she quite austerely threw off.

Mr. Mitchett, at this, had on his side a wonder. "Does Edward imagine—?"

"My dear man, Edward never 'imagined' anything in life." She still had her eyes on him. "Therefore if he SEES a thing, don't you know? it must exist."

Mitchy for a little fixed the person mentioned as he sat with his other guest, but whatever this person saw he failed just then to see his wife's companion, whose eyes he never met. His face only offered itself after the fashion of a clean domestic vessel, a receptacle with the peculiar property of constantly serving yet never filling, to Lord Petherton's talkative splash. "Well, only don't let him take it up. Let it be only between you and me," Mr. Mitchett pleaded; "keep him quiet— don't let him speak to me." He appeared to convey with his pleasant extravagance that Edward looked dangerous, and he went on with a rigour of levity: "It must be OUR little quarrel."