more than most men contain. Certainly a man like Jacob Blathenoy was a
mouthful for any woman: and he had bought his wife, he deserved no pity.
Not? Probably not. That view, however, is unwholesome and opens on
slides. Pity of his wife, too, gets to be fervidly active with her
portrait, fetches her breath about us. As for condemnation of the poor
little woman, her case was not unexampled, though the sudden flare of it
startled rather. Mrs. Victor could read men and women closely. Yes, and
Victor, when he schemed--but Dartrey declined to be throwing blame right
or left. More than by his breakfast, and in a preferable direction, he
was refreshed by Skepsey's narrative of the deeds of Matilda Pridden.

'The right sort of girl for you to know, Skepsey,' he said. 'The best in
life is a good woman.'

Skepsey exhibited his book of the Gallic howl.

'They have their fits now and then, and they're soon over and forgotten,'
Dartrey said. 'The worst of it is, that we remember.'

After the morning's visit to his uncle, he peered at half a dozen sticks
in the corner of the room, grasped their handles, and selected the
Demerara supple-jack, for no particular reason; the curved knot was easy
to the grasp. It was in his mind, that this person signing herself
Judith Marsett, might have something to say, which intimately concerned
Nesta. He fell to brooding on it, until he wondered why he had not been
made a trifle anxious by the reading of the note overnight. Skepsey was
left at Nesta's house.

Dartrey found himself expected by the servant waiting on Mrs. Marsett.