"No; I can understand you quite well. I should very often be impatient myself if I had no servants to help me."
"What a horrible thought! Suppose, Ciss, we all of a sudden lost everything, and we had to go and live in a garret, and I had to get work as a clerk at five-and-twenty shillings a week. How soon should we hate the sight of each other, and the sound of each other's voices?"
"It might come to that," replied Cecily, with half a smile. "Perhaps."
"There's no doubt about it."
Cecily remembered something she had written in the book with the silver lock—a book which had not been opened for a long time.
"I used to think nothing could bring that about. And I am not sure yet."
"I should behave like a ruffian. I know myself well enough."
"I think that would kill my love in time."
"Of course it would. How can any one love what is not lovable?"
"Yet we hear," suggested Cecily, "of wretched women remaining devoted to husbands who all but murder them now and then."