all those long years, and I began to think he
would never come.  But, from the first
moment when I heard you speak, and met
your eyes, I felt that he was near me.  And
I am glad to wear my master's chains," she
added, kissing my hand.

  And I am sure she was in earnest.  I
pleased her best when I treated her most
like a child.  She was no angel—a passionate,
high-spirited creature.  She rebelled a
thousand times a day, although she delighted
in my control.  But it was pretty to see her,
when she turned to leave the room, with fire
in her eyes, and a deep flush on her cheek—
it was pretty to see her with her hand upon
the lock even, drop her proud head submissively,
and wait when I said—" Stop. Shut
the door, and listen to me."  Yet it was
dangerous.  I, who had never been loved
before, what could I do but become a tyrant,
when a creature so noble as this bent down
before me!

  She loved me. Every chord of her most
sensitive heart thrilled and trembled to my
touch, and gave forth sweetest music; yet I
was not satisfied.  I tried the minor key.
Through her deep affection for me I wounded
her cruelly.  I can see it now.  Some wise
idea found its way into my head and whispered
that I was making a child of my wife
by my indulgent ways, and that her character
would never develop its strength in so much
sunshine.  l acted upon that thought, forgetting
how she had already been tried in the fiery
furnace of affliction; and, quite unconscious,
that while she was getting back all the innocent
gaiety of her childish years, the deep
lessons of her womanhood were still lying
beneath the sparkling surface of her playful
ways.

  If, for a time, she had charmed me out of
my graver self, I resolved to be charmed no
more.  I devoted myself again to my business,
heart and soul, and sat poring for
hours over law papers without speaking to her.
Yet she did not complain.  So
long as she was certain that I loved her, she
was content, and took up her pen again, and
went on with the work our marriage had interrupted.
Her writing-desk was in my
study, by a window just opposite mine; and
sometimes I would cease to hear the rapid
movement of her pen, and, looking up, I
would find her eyes fixed upon my face,
while a happy smile was playing around her
lips.  One day that glance found me in a
most unreasonable mood.  The sense of her
love half pained me, and I said curtly:

"It is bad taste, Alice, to look at anyone in
that way."

She dropped her pen, only too glad of an
excuse to talk to me, and came and leaned
over my chair.

"And why? when I love some one."

  This was a bad beginning of the lesson.  I
wanted to teach her, and I turned over my
papers in silence.

"Do I annoy you, Francis?"

"Not much."

  Her light hand was playing with my hair,
and her breath was warm on my cheek.  I
felt my wisdom vanishing, and tried to make
up for its loss by an increased coldness of
manner.

" One kiss," she said. " Just one, and I'll
go away."

" What nonsense, Alice.  What time have
I to think of kisses now?"

  She stood up, and looked me in the face.

"Do I tease you, Francis?"

"Very much."

She gave a little sigh—so faint that I
could scarcely hear it—and left the room.
I had scared her gaiety away for that
morning.

This was the first cloud in our sky.

  It seems strange, now, when I look back
upon it after the lapse of years, how perseveringly
I laboured to destroy the foundation
of peace and happiness on which I
might have built my life.  The remaining
six months of that year were months of
misery to me, and, I doubt not, to Alice, for
she grew thin and pale, and lost her gaiety.  I
had succeeded only too well in my plan, and
she had learned to doubt my affection for
her.  I felt this by the look in her eyes now
and then, and by the way in which she
seemed to cling to her dog, as if his fidelity
and love were now her only hope.  But I
was too proud to own myself in the wrong,
and the breach widened day by day.

  In the midst of all this estrangement
the dog sickened.  There was a week of
misgiving on Alice's part, when she sat beside
him with her books, or writing all the
time—there was a day when both books
and manuscript were put away, and she was
bending over him, with her tears falling fast,
as she tried to hush his moans, and looked
into his fast glazing eyes— and there was an
hour of stillness, when she lay on the low
couch, with her arm around his neck, neither
speaking nor stirring.  And when the poor
creature's last breath was drawn, she bent
over him with a passionate burst of grief,
kissed the white spot upon his forehead, and
closed the soft, dark eyes, that even in death
were turned towards her with a loving look.

  She did not come to me for sympathy.
She watched alone, while the gardener dug a
grave and buried him beneath the study
window.  She never mentioned him to me,
and never paid her daily visit to his grave
till I was busy with my papers for the
evening.  So the year, which had begun in
love and happiness, came to its close.

  I sat in the study alone, one morning in
the February following, looking over some
deeds that had been long neglected, when I
heard Alice singing in the balcony outside
the window.  It was the first time I had
heard her sing since Fred's death, and I laid
down my pen to listen.  But hearing her