Miss A. Jenny, you should not have told that. It will confirm Mr. Beverly in his cynicism regarding her want of taste.

Philip. I remember the morning the young fellow and I walked into Chicoutimi together that I said to him, "Lately married, I believe?" and he only nodded stiffly and pointed out the falls in the distance.

Beverly. Now, it is a deliciously pretty blunder for a bride to proclaim her good-luck, but it is a blunder nevertheless. For six months a man forgives it: after that he has no fondness for being paraded as a part and parcel of a woman's belongings. By that time he has probably found out that she is not all gushing unconsciousness. Besides this adorable innocence I observed something else in this pretty bride. Despite her fresh raptures, she was capable of jealousy: if her husband left her for an hour he found her a trifle sullen on his return.

Miss A. She had nobody else.

Mrs. M. She naturally wanted to feel that he was interested in nothing besides her.

Beverly. But she should not have shown it. This is another perverse and suicidal inconsistency on a woman's part: she should never exhibit these small meannesses of pique, sullen tempers, jealousy, to her husband, since they place her wholly at a disadvantage, making her less attractive than the objects she wishes to detach him from.

Mrs. M. (a little embarrassed and looking toward her husband deprecatingly, at which he laughs and shakes his head). Woman is a creature of impulse. She does not study what it is most politic for her to do: she gives herself utterly—she simply asks for everything in return.

Beverly. Does she give herself utterly? Does she not generally keep an accurate debit-and-credit account of what is due to her? Then the moment she feels her rights infringed upon, what is her usual course? She holds it her prerogative to set out upon a course of conduct eminently qualified to displease the very man whom it is her interest and her salvation to please.

Mrs. M. But he should try as well to please her.

Beverly. That is begging the question. Besides, her requirements are unreasonable. She holds too tight a rein: a man is never safe after he feels that strain at the bit. Now even you, Jenny—whom I hold up as a model of a wife—you will not let Philip express his admiration for a pretty woman without—