"You are aware that these Chancery proceedings may ruin me?"
"He told me they would. But if you are imagining that I can do anything, dismiss the notion. I have told him as plainly as I dare that I wish him to drop all public quarrel with you, and that you could make an arrangement without scandal. I can do no more. He will not listen to me; he doesn't mind about my feelings. He cares more for Mr Transome than he does for me. He will not listen to me any more than if I were an old ballad-singer."
"It's very hard on me, I know," said Jermyn, in the tone with which a man flings out a reproach.
"I besought you three months ago to bear anything rather than quarrel with him."
"I have not quarrelled with him. It is he who has been always seeking a quarrel with me. I have borne a good deal—more than any one else would. He set his teeth against me from the first."
"He saw things that annoyed him; and men are not like women," said Mrs Transome. There was a bitter innuendo in that truism.
"It's very hard on me—I know that," said Jermyn, with an intensification of his previous tone,
