the couple tied, let ’em hate as they like, if they can’t furnish pork-butchers’ reasons for sundering; because the man makes the money in this country.—­My goodness! what a funny people, sir!—­It ’s our way of holding the balance, ma’am.—­But would it not be better to rectify the law and the social system, dear sir?—­Why, ma’am, we find it comfortabler to take cases as they come, in the style of our fathers.—­But don’t you see, my good man, that you are offering scapegoats for the comfort of the majority?—­Well, ma’am, there always were scapegoats, and always will be; we find it comes round pretty square in the end.

’And I may be the scapegoat, Emmy!  It is perfectly possible.  The grocer, the pork-butcher, drysalter, stationer, tea-merchant, et caetera—­they sit on me.  I have studied the faces of the juries, and Mr. Braddock tells me of their composition.  And he admits that they do justice roughly—­a rough and tumble country! to quote him—­though he says they are honest in intention.’

‘More shame to the man who drags you before them—­if he persists!’ Emma rejoined.

‘He will.  I know him.  I would not have him draw back now,’ said Diana, catching her breath.  ’And, dearest, do not abuse him; for if you do, you set me imagining guiltiness.  Oh, heaven!—­suppose me publicly pardoned!  No, I have kinder feelings when we stand opposed.  It is odd, and rather frets my conscience, to think of the little resentment I feel.  Hardly any!  He has not cause to like his wife.  I can own it, and I am sorry for him, heartily.  No two have ever come together so naturally antagonistic as we two.  We walked a dozen steps in stupefied union, and hit upon crossways.  From that moment it was tug and tug; he me, I him.  By resisting, I made him a tyrant; and he, by insisting, made me a rebel.  And he was the maddest of tyrants—­a weak one.  My dear, he was also a double-dealer.  Or no, perhaps not in design.  He was moved at one time by his interests; at another by his idea of his honour.  He took what I could get for him, and then turned and drubbed me for getting it.’

‘This is the creature you try to excuse!’ exclaimed indignant Emma.

’Yes, because—­but fancy all the smart things I said being called my “sallies"!—­can a woman live with it?—­because I behaved . . .  I despised him too much, and I showed it.  He is not a contemptible man before the world; he is merely a very narrow one under close inspection.  I could not—­or did not—­conceal my feeling.  I showed it not only to him, to my friend.  Husband grew to mean to me stifler, lung-contractor, iron mask, inquisitor, everything anti-natural.  He suffered under my “sallies”:  and it was the worse for him when he did not perceive their drift.  He is an upright man; I have not seen marked meanness.  One might build up a respectable figure in negatives.  I could add a row of noughts to the single number he cherishes, enough to make a millionnaire of him; but strike away the first,