Often before now I have only been able to gauge the unfortunateness of my speeches to men, by the rasping effect they have had on their tempers, and which has often taken me honestly by surprise.
"_Again_, Mr.Musgrave has not been to call," say I, one afternoon, on returning from a long and rather grilling drive, speaking in a slightly annoyed tone.
"Did you expect that he would ?" asks Sir Roger, with a smile.

"I think that, after the searching snub you gave him, he would have been a bolder man than I take him for, if he had risked his head in the lion's mouth." "_Am_ I such a lion ?" say I, with an accent of vexation.

"_Did_ I snub him?
I am sure I had no more idea of snubbing him than I had of snubbing _you_; that is the way in which I always cut my own throat!" I draw a chair into the balcony, where he has already established himself with his cigar, and sit down beside him.
"I foresee," say I, beginning to laugh rather grimly, "that a desert will spread all round our house! your friends will disappear before my tongue, like morning mist." "Let them!" After a pause, edging a little nearer to him, and, regardless of the hay-carts in the market below--laying my fair-haired head on his shoulder: "What _could_ have made you marry such a _shrew_?
I believe it was the purest philanthropy." "That was it!" he answers, fondly.

"To save any other poor fellow from such an infliction!" "Quite unnecessary!" rejoin I, shaking my head.

"If you had not married me, it is very certain that nobody else would!" Another day has come.