and follow her thoughts.
    »Dear me!« she exclaimed. »I noticed a change in Letty Dale last night: and
to-day. She looked fresher and younger; extremely well: which is not what I can
say for you, my friend. Fatalizing is not good for the complexion.«
    »Don't take away my health, pray!« cried Willoughby, with a snapping laugh.
    »Be careful,« said Mrs. Mountstuart. »You have got a sentimental tone. You
talk of feelings crushed of old. It is to a woman, not to a man that you speak,
but that sort of talk is a way of making the ground slippery. I listen in vain
for a natural tongue; and when I don't hear it, I suspect plotting in men. You
show your under-teeth too at times when you draw in a breath, like a condemned
high-caste Hindoo my husband took me to see in a jail in Calcutta, to give me
some excitement when I was pining for England. The creature did it regularly as
he breathed; you did it last night, and you have been doing it to-day, as if the
air cut you to the quick. You have been spoilt. You have been too much anointed.
What I've just mentioned is a sign with me of a settled something on the brain
of a man.«
    »The brain?« said Sir Willoughby, frowning.
    »Yes, you laugh sourly, to look at,« said she. »Mountstuart told me that the
muscles of the mouth betray men sooner than the eyes, when they have cause to be
uneasy in their minds.«
    »But, ma'am, I shall not break my word; I shall not, not; I intend, I have
resolved to keep it. I do not fatalize, let my complexion be black or white.
Despite my resemblance to a high-class malefactor of the Calcutta prison-wards
...«
    »Friend! friend! you know how I chatter.«
    He saluted her finger-ends. »Despite the extraordinary display of teeth, you
will find me go to execution with perfect calmness; with a resignation as good
as happiness.«
    »Like a Jacobite lord under the Georges.«
    »You have told me that you wept to read of one: like him, then. My
principles have not changed, if I have. When I was younger, I had an idea of a
wife who would be with me in my thoughts as well as