smiles, his wife's hesitating objections. Before six months were over the ten thousand pounds had enriched a few knaves, and were lost forever to Alicia and her children yet unborn. Spite this mistake, which he would not acknowledge, Mr. Ford did not forfeit at once his wife's confidence. She still hoped in him, and believed in the future; but a few years after this loss, five thousand pounds which Mr. Ford inherited from an uncle, shared the same fate; Mrs. Ford had little or no imagination-love could give her illusions, but once the hard touch of reality had dispelled them, there was in her no power to call them back. She now saw her husband as he was-good natured, obstinate, foolish and intellectual, and her pride in him was gone for ever.

Mrs. Ford was a very proud woman. She would not acknowledge that she had been mistaken; no, it was Mr. Ford who had deceived her. She did not reproach him; but she brooded over her wrongs with the obstinacy of a narrow mind, and the bitterness of a wounded heart.

Of this Mr. Ford remained unconscious. He adored his wife, and was convinced that she adored him. At the same time, he thought himself superior to her, and showed her that he thought so. He concealed none of his weaknesses from her. Nay, he was rather lavish in displaying them to her gaze. She saw that though his kind heart could win him friends, his irritable temper would allow him to keep none. Mr. Ford cast away from him every helping hand, and whilst many derived benefit from him, he derived benefit from none. This result, which he was clear-sighted enough to see, but not frank enough to acknowledge, made him sore. He took scornful views of human nature, and grew sour at home. Yet he still fondly loved his wife. His love increased instead of lessening with years, whilst hers daily grew weaker and weaker, and at length died entirely. Something remained: duty, lukewarm liking-but not love.

Alicia Norton could not do without admiring her husband, and it was impossible to live with Mr. Ford and to admire him, spite some sterling qualities. His want of judgment had given her pride a great shock, his folly in alienating men whom a shrewder man could have made subservient to his own ends, irritated and vexed her: his rejection of her advice, his carelessness of her opinion offended her, and the strange blindness with which he still believed in her love, and even boasted of it in her presence, made her despise him. His want of success in his profession, which he neglected for ruinous speculations, the poverty

to which it condemned her and her children, made her severe to his weaknesses—and these, alas! were not of the heroic kind.

Mr. Ford was an untidy man at home. He was selfish in little things, pettish, irritable, and despotic by fits. His kind heart, his sincere love, could not soften a woman like Alicia. She had convinced herself that he was to blame for having married her, not she for having married him; and she settled down into a puerile mode of discontent, which she had, however, sufficient strength and dignity not to betray. She allowed her husband to adore her, and even to enjoy the shew of affection which could deceive him. She no longer obtruded the advice he would not always follow, but confined her attention to domestic concerns. Sometimes she hated herself for having ever loved him, and sometimes she hated life for having so ruthlessly lost its prizes: Love, wealth, ambition and its rewards.

"Some lives are one great wreck," thought Alicia, in her despair, "and such is mine."

Her greatest trial was yet to come. Robert grew up like her in person, and like her husband in temper and manner. Mr. Ford spoke in a drawl, interrupted by loud pettish jerks, and Robert showed signs of imitating the paternal propensity. Eagerly Mrs. Ford tried to correct the boy and to make him speak in a clear and distinct tone. Robert's vanity was stirred, and he showed himself remarkably ductile, until that same vanity was more powerfully appealed to by his father's unmerciful ridicule. Inspired by an unlucky spirit of opposition, which always seized him at the wrong moment, he did his best to undo his wife's teaching.

"Why, Robert," he said to him with his derisive laugh, "what priggish pedantry have they put into you?"

Robert, who was not then much more than six years old, had not the moral fortitude to withstand this taunt. His mother saw him redden.

"Talk like a man," pursued his father, "and not like a methodist preacher. Why, all the other boys will laugh at you when you go to school."

They shan't," sullenly answered Robert.

This scene, one of many, was the last Mrs. Ford witnessed. She listened to her husband, and never spoke or remonstrated with him. She was not even angry with Mr. Ford. No, the sting went deeper. In Robert's sudden and resentful abandonment of her teaching, she recognized the weak vanity of his father. Was he then to grow up like him? She was near her

third confinement, and as she thought of another child her heart seemed to break within her. Was she, Alicia Norton, to be the mother of a race of fools and of social outcasts ?

She went upstairs that night in an agony of tumultuous feelings and of wounded pride. The child, a third boy, was born before the morning. Its sex gave her the last pang she could suffer as a mother. Another image of her husband! She never recovered the shock-disease seized her, and made her helpless in her own home. Perhaps the divine chastisement of too much pride.

This was a twofold calamity. Whilst illness held her captive upstairs, the house below was going to the ruin of abandonment, dirt, and squalor; her husband drank and neglected the little business he had, and her children grew up wild, rude, and undisciplined. But the greatest misfortune of all was the complete darkness which settled over Mrs. Ford's mental vision. She became querulous, capricious, and exacting. She brooded over her wrongs until she could think of and see nothing else. She was an ill-used woman, and Mr. Ford was the worst husband a woman had ever had. She was too amiable and too proud to reproach him; she even called in resignation to her aid, and was heroic enough to allow him to see and address her but his daily presence was an infliction it required all that heroism to bear.

All this would have been ridiculous if it had not been tragic in some of its consequences. It was during this long illness, which would have alienated the love of many a better man, that Mr. Ford's tenderness for his wife burned with purest flame. He proved it in a hundred ways, which, could she but have known the least of them, would have subdued and humbled even Alicia's proud heart.

When the first inroads of pinching poverty began, Mr. Ford resolved that, no matter who suffered from this change, Alicia should not. She was not in a state of mind to bear care or to hear of debts, why trouble her with such concerns? Then she could not be denied her fancies, no matter what they might be ! No, Alicia must be gratified-he, the boys even, could do without. Thus the miserable condition of the little world below had a double meaning: it was the work of unthriftiness, of loose habits and extravagance, and it was also the work of much love. Mrs. Ford's fancies were not very expensive, but they were numerous and wasteful. Often when a savoury and separate meal was brought up to her, she would send it down untasted and ask for a cup of tea. Then she required attendance so

exclusive, that for a long time an extra servant was kept; when that became impossible, the work below was neglected and the parlour took care of itself, and the boys tore and mended their clothes if they pleased. The havoc and ruin she caused, Mrs. Ford was never allowed to suspect. The boys had clothes in which they appeared before their mother, and Susan spoke of Margaret and Mary Ann to her deceived mistress. With time she dropped Margaret, finding the fiction troublesome, but Mary Ann she clung to as a convenient scapegoat.

And still Mrs. Ford thought herself ill-used. That there should be comfort she took as a matter of course. That there should be neither wealth nor luxury was Mr. Ford's fault. Another man with his opportunities would have kept his carriage long before this. She did not care about the carriage, nor want it, but it was one of those proofs of success which Mrs. Ford was too matter of fact to overlook. These feelings were always strongest when Mr. Ford paid her his daily visit; she could not and would not show them, and the restraint made his presence doubly distasteful. Poor Mr. Ford ascribed her cold manner to her complaint. And she was so cold, and therefore, as he thought, so ill, on this present day, that it pained him. He thrust his hands in his pockets and looked gloomy. It was hard to have so sickly a wife. Other women were not so-seven years too; but then poor Alicia could not help it-no-and she was so fond of him, too, with it all.

"How is it you are at home at this hour?" at length asked Mrs. Ford.

"I had an appointment," replied her husband, not choosing to confess he had not gone out that day.

"With whom?" inquired Mrs. Ford, who seemed in the questioning mood-one rare with her.

"With-with Captain George," was the hesitating reply. Mrs. Ford opened her eyes, and seemed to search far back into memory for the name. She found it, for her cheek flushed, her look lit, but she did not speak.

"He is the same jaunty fellow as ever," pursued Mr. Ford, "but the very man to dazzle fools."

"He is no fool," said Mrs. Ford.

"I did not say he was, my dear; but he is shallow, which is I have studied that man's character thoroughly, and he

worse.

is shallow-to the heart's core.'

"Take care, Mr. Ford-take care- "said his wife, sitting up in her chair, and leaning her two hands on its leather arms, "that man is not shallow-he is bad-bad."

"Do not excite yourself, my dear," kindly said her husband: "leave Captain George to me. You know it is not easy to deceive me, my love."

You know my

"He is dangerous," she gasped-" dangerous!" Yes, my love-to some-but not to me. insight into character."

"What did he come for ?—what is it?" she persisted.

"My love, you know I do not talk to you on professional matters; but rely upon it, I have not the least faith in Captain George; I know the man," added Mr. Ford, with great emphasis.

Mrs. Ford smiled bitterly. That was how she was treated -that was how her advice was received.

"I am afraid Captain George's loud knock disturbed you," said Mr. Ford; "but it was Susan who opened"And why did Susan open?" interrupted Mrs. Ford: "Susan is to wait upon me. I must insist on Mary Ann attending to the door."

Mr. Ford scratched his pimple, but hit on a bright invention.

66

'Mary Ann was in the dumps," he said, gravely; "I gave her warning this morning-that girl is getting unmanageable.'

And so she was; and Mr. Ford, whom the practice of seven years had not yet made perfect in the art of invention, had resolved to get rid of this troublesome person altogether.

Mrs. Ford shut her eyes again, and sighed; another man would have had a footman by this; but no-thanks to his folly and imprudence, Mr. Ford would live and die with two female servants.

"Mr. Ford," she said, gravely, "do as you please about Mary Ann; keep or dismiss her what is it to me? but do not take Susan from me. She has enough to do in attending to me."

"Certainly, my love, by all means."

"As to that Mary Ann, I am glad she is going. I am tired of hearing about her misdeeds."

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"And she shall go," emphatically replied Mr. Ford. "Take a first-rate servant instead," pursued his wife; give her twenty, thirty pounds a year if need be-a little money more or less is not much matter."

"Of course not."

"And, Mr. Ford, get me an harmonium, if you please. I cannot talk, and yet the silence of these rooms is too much for me."