cheerful society and let her get accustomed to seeing a bright young face about her; but I am afraid her obstinate reserve has so far defeated my object. However, I don’t despair. Now that you know something of her history, you are more likely to sympathize with her and to make some allowance for her seeming coldness. Believe me, underneath all she has a warm heart still. And I am sure you will spare a little sympathy for me, condemned to see the wife I adore living a shut-up life, as it were, seeming to ignore the undying affection of which she must still be conscious.”There was something so winning in his voice and manner as he said these last words that I felt for the moment even more sorry for him than for her, and I took the hand he held out as he rose to go, and looked up with all the frank sympathy I felt. He seemed touched by it, for, as if by a sudden impulse, he stooped and let his lips lightly touch my hand; then, pressing it once more in his, with a look of almost grateful kindliness, he left the room.

I was a little surprised by this demonstration, which I thought rather out of place to a dependant. But he was an impulsive man, the very opposite in all things to his cold statuesque wife, and the union between them seemed sometimes like a bond between the dead and the living.

When I thought over all that he had told me, after he had left the room, it was impossible, even setting apart my natural inclination as a woman to put the blame on the woman, not to come to the conclusion that the fault in this most uncomfortable household was chiefly on the side of Mrs. Rayner. I had never seen a more attentive, long-suffering husband, nor a more coldly irritating wife. From all I had seen, I judged that Mr. Rayner was a sociable man, particularly alive to sympathy, fond of conversation and the society of his fellow-men. To such a man the sort of exile his wife’s obstinate reserve and dislike to society condemned him to must have been specially hard to bear with patience. It was true he scoffed at the society the neighborhood afforded, and made me laugh by his description of a country dinner-party, where one could almost predict with certainty what each lady would wear, and where more than half the gentlemen were clergymen, and how the talk would drift after dinner into clerical “shop,” and one of the ladies would play a colorless drawing-room piece on the piano, and one of the gentlemen--a curate nearly always--would sing an unintelligible song, in a husky voice, and, when told--by a lady--how well it suited his style, would reply modestly that Santley’s songs always did.

But I fancied that, dull as it might be, 

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