’I will tell you nothing more.  If you cannot understand what I have said, you must be more dull of comprehension than I believe you to be.  Now go.  Why are you not gone this half-hour?’

‘How could I go while you were giving me all this good advice?’

’I have not asked you to stay.  Go now, at any rate.  And, remember, Conway, if this picture is to go on, I will not have you remaining here after the work is done.  Will you remember that?’ And she held him by the hand while he declared that he would remember it.

Mrs Dobbs Broughton was no more in love with Conway Dalrymple than she was in love with King Charles on horseback at Charing Cross.  And, over and beyond the protection which came to her in the course of nature from impassioned feelings in this special phase of her life—­and indeed, if I may say, in every phase of her life—­it must be acknowledged on her behalf that she did enjoy that protection which comes from what we call principle—­though the principle was not perhaps very high of its kind.  Madalina Demolines had been right when she talked of her friend Maria’s principles.  Dobbs Broughton had been so far lucky in that jump in the dark which he had made in taking a wife to himself, that he had not fallen upon a really vicious woman, or upon a woman of strong feeling.  It had come to be the lot of Mrs Dobbs Broughton to have six hours’ work every day of her life, I think that the work would have been done badly, but that it would have kept her free from all danger.  As it was she had nothing to do.  She had no child.  She was not given to much reading.  She could not sit with a needle in her hand all day.  She had no aptitude for May meetings, or the excitement of charitable good works.  Life with her was very dull, and she found no amusement within her reach so easy and so pleasant as the amusement of pretending to be in love.  If all that she did and all that she said could only have been taken for its worth and for nothing more, by the different persons concerned, there was very little in it to flatter Mr Dalrymple or to give cause for tribulation to Mr Broughton.  She probably cared but little for either of them.  She was one of those women to whom it is not given by nature to care very much for anybody.  But, of the two, she certainly cared the most for Mr Dobbs Broughton—­because Mr Dobbs Broughton belonged to her.  As to leaving Mr Dobbs Broughton’s house, and putting herself into the hands of another man—­no Imogen of a wife was ever less likely to take step so wicked, so dangerous, and so generally disagreeable to all the parties concerned.

But Conway Dalrymple—­though now and again he had got a side glance at her true character with a clear-seeing eye—­did allow himself to be flattered and deceived.  He knew that she was foolish and ignorant, and that she often talked wonderful nonsense.  He knew also that she was continually contradicting herself—­as when she would strenuously beg him to leave her, while she would