“Well, there is simply nothing she wouldn’t do for Linn’s sake,” he made answer; “and if I were to tell her I thought it would greatly help his recovery if he were to know that she was well, that she was here in London and ready to be friends with him and looking forward to his getting better, then I am pretty sure she would remain for that little time at least, and do anything we asked of her.  Of course it would not do for them to meet just now—­Linn is too weak to stand any excitement—­and he will be so for some time to come; still, I think Nina would wait that time if we told her she could be of help.  Then once these two have seen each other and spoken, let them take the management of their own affairs.  Why, good gracious me!” he exclaimed, in lighter tones, “haven’t you and I got our own affairs to manage, too?  I have just been drawing up a code of regulations for the better governing of a wife!”

“Oh, indeed!” said Francie.

“Yes, indeed,” said he, firmly.  “I am a believer in the good old robust virtues that have made England what she is—­or rather, what she has been.  I’m not a sentimentalist.  If the sentimentalists and the theorists and the faddists go on as they are doing, they’ll soon leave us without any England at all; England will be moralized away to nothing; there will only be her name and her literature left to remind the world that she once existed.  The equal rights of women—­that’s one of their fads.  The equal rights of women!  Bosh!  Women ought to be very proud and grateful that they are allowed to live at all!  However, that is a general principle; the particular application of it is that a man should be master in his own house, and that his wife’s first and paramount duty is to obey him—­”

“You shouldn’t frighten me too soon, Maurice,” she said—­but she did not appear to be terribly scared.

“And I mean to begin as I mean to end,” said he, ominously, as they were about to cross the street on their way back.  “I am not going to marry a wife who will have all her interests out of doors.  I will not allow it.  A woman, madam, should attend to her own house and her own husband, and not spend her time in gadding about hospitals and sick-wards and making friends and companions of nurses.”

Francie laughed at him.

“Why, Maurice,” said she, as they were about to enter, “you yourself are the very best nurse I ever saw!”

But it was not in this mood that Mangan received Miss Burgoyne when she called that afternoon to make inquiries.  She and her brother were shown to the room up-stairs, and thither Mangan followed them.  He was very polite and cold and courteous; told her that Lionel was getting on very well; that the fever was subsiding, and that he was quite sensible again, though very weak; and said he hoped his complete recovery was now only a question of time.  But when the young lady—­with more hesitation than she usually displayed—­preferred a request that she might be allowed to see Mr. Moore, Maurice met that by a gently decisive negative.