“But not that?”

“No; not that.  I could not do that.”  Then he went off upon his figure, and when they were next both standing together, they remained silent till their turn for dancing had again come.  Why was it, that after that night Lily thought more of John Eames than ever she had thought before;—­felt for him, I mean, a higher respect, as for a man who had a will of his own?

And in that quadrille Crofts and Bell had been dancing together, and they also had been talking of Lily’s marriage.  “A man may undergo what he likes for himself,” he had said, “but he has no right to make a woman undergo poverty.”

“Perhaps not,” said Bell.

“That which is no suffering for a man,—­which no man should think of for himself,—­will make a hell on earth for a woman.”

“I suppose it would,” said Bell, answering him without a sign of feeling in her face or voice.  But she took in every word that he spoke, and disputed their truth inwardly with all the strength of her heart and mind, and with the very vehemence of her soul.  “As if a woman cannot bear more than a man!” she said to herself, as she walked the length of the room alone, when she had got herself free from the doctor’s arm.

CHAPTER X

Mrs Lupex and Amelia Roper

I should simply mislead a confiding reader if I were to tell him that Mrs Lupex was an amiable woman.  Perhaps the fact that she was not amiable is the one great fault that should be laid to her charge; but that fault had spread itself so widely, and had cropped forth in so many different places of her life, like a strong rank plant that will show itself all over a garden, that it may almost be said that it made her odious in every branch of life, and detestable alike to those who knew her little and to those who knew her much.  If a searcher could have got at the inside spirit of the woman, that searcher would have found that she wished to go right,—­that she did make, or at any rate promise to herself that she would make, certain struggles to attain decency and propriety.  But it was so natural to her to torment those whose misfortune brought them near to her, and especially that wretched man who in an evil day had taken her to his bosom as his wife, that decency fled from her, and propriety would not live in her quarters.

Mrs Lupex was, as I have already described her, a woman not without some feminine attraction in the eyes of those who like morning negligence and evening finery, and do not object to a long nose somewhat on one side.  She was clever in her way, and could say smart things.  She could flatter also, though her very flattery had always in it something that was disagreeable.  And she must have had some power of will, as otherwise her husband would have escaped from her before the days of which I am writing.  Otherwise, also, she could hardly have obtained her footing and kept it in Mrs Roper’s drawing-room.  For though the hundred pounds a year, either paid, or promised to be paid, was matter with Mrs Roper of vast consideration, nevertheless the first three months of Mrs Lupex’s sojourn in Burton Crescent was not over before the landlady of that house was most anxiously desirous of getting herself quit of her married boarders.