"But who asked you? Are they in London?"
"They were."
"And you saw them?"
"Yes."
"Why did you not tell me they were here?"
"Because they were persons with whom I did not choose my wife to associate."
"Were they fit associates for you then?" was on my tongue, but I suppressed it; for mistaken indeed is the wife who thinks reproach can ever do ought but alienate the object of it.
"But did you often visit them? and what made them presume to apply to you?"
"Necessity. She wrote to me again and again, and she way-laid me too—what could I do? I was never proof against a woman's tears—and I was bound for him."
"Well, and what then?"