anything to them. It is so shocking to
imagine that a person who has been as long
about one as Janet has been about me, should
go to the union and live on the parish,
after she has made one's very caps, and worn
one's very gowns! It is horrible!—and I
cannot bear the thought of it. So I have
done all this just to keep her out of the
House for my own sake. As far as she is
concerned, she might go to-morrow for
anything I should mind. Her folly in marrying
that Robert Maylin deserves some punishment."

Miss Harrington was one of those old
maids who are determined that Heaven shall
have nothing to do with them. Their charity
is only contemptuous almsgiving, their
mortified affection, vindictive spitefulness; if
they love you, it is from selfishness; and if
they do you good, it is from selfishness again.
She was resolute in making herself out as evil-
minded as possible, and took a crabbed
pleasure in being virtuous and appearing vicious.
On the day of the marriage, she sat upstairs
and cried the whole time; but she said it
was from vexation at the blunders of the
little red-haired parish oaf—she had chosen
the ugliest and most stupid girl in the school—
who had taken Janet's place. As for Janet—
on the whole, she thought she was glad to
get rid of her. She had found out that she
did not quite suit her.

To do Robert Maylin justice, he was as
much attached to Janet as he could be
attached to any one. But his love was of a
kind that did not wear well: it was love born
of personal fancy alone; drawing nothing of
its nourishment from respect, and less from
principle. It was all very well while the
gloss of newness lasted on it; but it soon grew
threadbare and shabby, and then he got tired
of it. The first months of his married life
went on smoothly enough. The pretty
cottage and the pretty wife, the air of peace
and love within those four walls, had a charm
for Robert which surprised himself, vagrant
as he was by nature. He liked his new
occupation too—that of a market-gardener—
and felt the effect of its healthful action on his
frame, which was not a little enfeebled by
his London habits. And being a very clever
fellow, handy and capable, he soon learnt his
business as well as the best of them, and
made some splendid hits in cabbages and
cauliflowers. It was a pleasant change to him
altogether, and he did not regret his plush
and gold-knobbed stick more than once or
twice a week—when he was teased with
snails, or baffled by blight.

But this season of pleasure did not last
long. With the waning summer sun faded
Robert Maylin's frail flowers of love; and
when the autumn moon had passed away,
scarce a leaf remained to scent the air. His
garden became stupid, and his work
degrading; his house was small and mean so
different to the jolly times of Chesham Place
and Berkeley Square! His wife was growing
ugly, and deemed tiresome; somehow he
wished that he had never married. He was
a deal better off as he was. What need had
he to screw himself up for life in a village,
with a silly woman and a parcel of yokels?
he used to say, as he went to the alehouse;
where he found more amusement in skittles,
and the barmaid's saucy blue eyes, than in
his own home, or his own wife. This was
his nature. If he had married an angel, he
would have exchanged her for a devil; and
six months of Venus would have seen him
Medusa's lover on the seventh.

Janet saw the change, but she tried to
soothe it away like a sickness. She did her
best to make her house inviting, and herself
smart—a quality which Robert placed at the
head of all feminine virtues. But all would
not do. He had wearied of matrimony as he
had wearied of love so often before; and you
cannot bring back the dead to life. He was
tired of her affection, and bored by her
attentions; and he wished twenty times a day that
he had never left his plush and his footboard.
And at last he told Janet plainly, that she
bothered him, and he wished she would leave
him alone.

Janet had a pair of red eyes that evening
when Miss Harrington sent for her to give
her a scolding, and a baby's cap.

"Perhaps it teases Robert that I am
changed, and can't do as I used, and don't
look as I used," she thought, as she slowly
walked to her former home. " When it is
all over, and things put to rights again, and
when he has baby to play with he will like
his own home again. Men are different to
us, and don't feel the happiness we do in these
things." And she concluded her soliloquy
by sobbing bitterly, which of course was a
manifestation of the happiness she was feeling
at present.

When her mistress rated her for her red
eyes, after she had scolded her sufficiently
for her impropriety, and vowed that she had
made an unhappy marriage after all—in the
tone of a policeman charging her with
murder, Janet stoutly denied all moral
causes for depression, and stood by the
physical like a heroine.

"One feels differently at these times, ma'am,
and one cannot help crying for nothing. It
does one good, and seems to relieve one.
Robert is kind as kind can be, and I have no
fault to find with any one."

And then she sat down on a chair, and
wept as if her heart was breaking.

When she went to bed that night, she asked
pardon for her falsehood. But as she looked
at her husband lying there, half drunk, and
thought how handsome and manly he was,
she felt she had been justified in lying for
him. And then she pushed his curls from off
his forehead; when he swore, and struck out
clumsily, and called her bad names in his
brutal, stupid, drunken sleep.