“Lucy, every bill shall be paid this day; but you must reward me by being happy.”

“Generous! dearest!  But, Walter, if you had been a poor man, what then?”

“Ah, Lucy, that would have been a very different and an infinitely sadder story.  Instead of the relinquishment of some indulgence hardly to be missed, there might have been ruin, and poverty, and disgrace.  You have one excuse,—­at least you knew that I could pay at last.”

“Ah, but at what a price!  The price of your love and confidence.”

“No, Lucy—­for your confession has been voluntary; and I will not ask myself what I should have felt had the knowledge come from another.  After all, you have fallen to a temptation which besets the wives of the rich far more than those of poor or struggling gentlemen.  Tradespeople are shrewd enough in one respect—­they do not press their commodities and long credit in quarters where ultimate payment seems doubtful—­though—­”

“They care not what domestic misery they create among the rich.”

“Stay:  there are faults on both sides, not the least of them being that girls in your station are too rarely taught the value of money, or that integrity in money matters should be to them a point of honor second only to one other.  Now listen, my darling, before we dismiss this painful subject forever.  You have the greatest confidence in your maid, and entre nous she must be a good deal in the secret.  We shall bribe her to discretion, however, by dismissing Madame Dalmas at once and forever.  As soon as you can spare Harris, I will send her to change a check at Coutts’, and then, for expedition and security, she shall take on the brougham and make a round to these tradespeople.  Meanwhile, I will drive you in the phaeton to look at the bracelet.”

“Oh, no-no, dear Walter, not the bracelet.”

“Yes—­yes—­I say yes.  Though not a quarrel, this is a sorrow which has come between us, and there must be a peace-offering.  Besides I would not have you think that you had reached the limits of my will, and of my means to gratify you.”

“To think that I could have doubted—­that I could have feared you!” sobbed Lady Lucy, as tears of joy coursed down her cheeks.  “But, Walter, it is not every husband who would have shown such generosity.”

“I think there are few husbands, Lucy, who do not estimate truth and candor as among the chief of conjugal virtues:—­ah, had you confided in me when first you felt the bondage of debt, how much anguish would have been spared you!”

* * * * *

JONES ON CHANTREY.[A]

[Footnote A:  Sir Francis Chantrey, R. A.; Recollections of his Life, Practice and Opinions.  By George Jones, R. A. London, Moxon, 1849.]

The criticisms of Literature in the London Times are as clever in their way as the other articles of that famous journal.  It keeps a critic of the Poe school for pretenders, and the following review of a recent life of Chantrey the sculptor is in his vein.  It embodies a just estimate of the artist.