’Mr. Woodseer came every other evening.  Our only enlivenment.  Livia followed her policy, in refusing to call.  We lived luxuriously; no money, not enough for a box at the opera, though we yearned—­you can imagine.  Chapters of philosophy read out and expounded instead.  Janey likes them.  He sets lessons to her queer maid—­reading, writing, pronunciation of English.  An inferior language to Welsh, for poetical purposes, we are informed.  So Janey—­determining to apply herself to Welsh, and a chameleon Riette dreading that she will be taking a contrary view of the honest souls—­as she feels them to be—­when again under Livia’s shadow.

’The message from Janey to Scrope’s hotel was despatched half-an-hour after we had driven in from the park; fruit of a brown meditation.  I wrote it—­third person—­a single sentence.  Arrangements are made for her to travel comfortably.  It is funny—­the shops for her purchases of clothes, necessaries, etc., are specified; she may order to any extent.  Not a shilling of money for her poor purse.  What can be the secret of that?  He does nothing without an object.  To me, uniformly civil, no irony, few compliments.  Livia writes, that I am commended for keeping Janey company.  What can be the secret of a man scrupulously just with one hand, and at the same time cruel with the other?  Mr. Woodseer says, his wealth:—­“More money than is required for their needs, men go into harness to Plutus,”—­if that is clever.

’I have written my husband—­as Janey ceases to call her own; and it was pretty and touching to hear her “my husband.”—­Oh! a dull letter.  But he is my husband though he keeps absent—­to be longed for—­he is my husband still, my husband always.  Chillon is Henrietta’s husband, the world cries out, and when she is flattered she does the like, for then it is not too presumptuous that she should name Henrietta Chillon’s wife.  In my ears, husband has the sweeter sound.  It brings an angel from overhead.  Will it bring him one-half hour sooner?  My love!  My dear!  If it did, I should be lisping “husband, husband, husband” from cock-crow to owl’s cry.  Livia thinks the word foolish, if not detestable.  She and I have our different opinions.  She is for luxury.  I choose poverty and my husband.  Poverty has its beauty, if my husband is the sun of it.  Elle radote.  She would not have written so dull a letter to her husband if she had been at the opera last night, or listened to a distant street-band.  No more—­the next line would be bleeding.  He should have her blood too, if that were her husband’s—­it would never be; but if it were for his good in the smallest way.  Chillon’s wish is to give his blood for them he loves.  Never did woman try more to write worthily to her absent lord and fall so miserably into the state of dripping babe from bath on nurse’s knee.  Cover me, my lord; and love, my cause for—­no, my excuse, my refuge from myself.  We are one?  Oh! we are one!—­and we have been separated eight and twenty days.