Scarsdale to remain as housekeeper at the head of his establishment. The entire seclusion in which, for several years after his wife's death, he had lived had made his visits few and far between. He had told the ladies that Mrs. Scarsdale would be very glad to make their acquaintance; and they had called and left their cards, and Mrs. Scarsdale had returned their civilities, and there the interchange of compliments had ceased. Mrs. Scarsdale, in allusion to the subject, always declared that she did not care for society; that past sorrows had incapacitated her from worldly pleasures; that the gaiety and heartlessness of the world were abhorrent to her. She lived only to make Mr. Hamilton comfortable. Everything that could be devised to render life easy and agreeable to him she saw carried out. His slippers and dressing-gown were al

ways warm. String, and sealing wax, and vestas, and every description of stationery, was always on his table. His newspapers were aired, and his magazines were cut for him; his bills paid, accounts kept, house superintended. She took care to have an excellent cook on the premises, knowing that, after three-and-twenty, the nearest way to a man's heart is through his digestive organs-his coffee was always good, his toast always crisp, his meals always punctual. What could any reasonable man wish for more? It was, “Your master must have this; your master requires that; your master must be attended to before any one; your master is the only person to be considered." So that sometimes Mr. Hamilton would have been glad to have had his mastership a little less obtrusively waved in the eyes of his household. But many persons who pass for

being very good in the world would never do a kind action unless they might have the satisfaction of fussily calling attention to their benevolent performances. Mrs. Scarsdale made very broad her phylacteries of personal devotion to Mr. Hamilton's comfort; and when he refused to perceive the ornamental embroidery of her garments, she took refuge in hysterics and humility, and an air of woe-begone deprecation which at once mystified and exasperated him. If at times it glanced across his mind that her position in his house was a somewhat anomalous one, and might be viewed askance by outsiders, he dismissed the idea as unworthy of serious entertainment. She was a married woman; no longer young; her husband must be somewhere. Or, now that he came to think of it, was she a widow? He could not really say. Something he had heard in

old times, and had then not cared to know more, provided his wife was satisfied. After her death he had been too much absorbed in his own grief to cast a thought to Mrs. Scarsdale, her antecedents and belongings; and in later days, if the question, taking the form of speculation, did glance across his mind, he felt it would be ungenerous, unjust almost, to question her so long after date. He had been for so long contented to take everything for granted; he would take everything for granted still. A man who tried to ferret out a woman's secrets was a dastard, a coward; and, besides, she had been very good to poor Margaret; and the end of it was Mr. Hamilton would go upstairs and fetch a ring, or a bracelet, or some costly gewgaw which had belonged to his dead wife, and would beg Caroline to accept it, and so the truce would be signed. "Poor

soul," he would say to himself, "we men Here she is doing everyare very mean. thing for me; devoted to me, heart and soul, and here I am suspecting her. I can't buy her anything. I will give her something of poor Margaret's. She will value it doubly as having been hers, and it will remove any scruples she might feel about taking things out of a jeweller's shop." And so, by a strange process, sweet Margaret Hamilton's jewels had wandered on to other hands and arms, hung in other ears, and about another neck, without any feeling of love or even affection accompanying them. Mrs. Scarsdale always refused the costly toys in the first instance; but she always ended by accepting them, so that Mr. Hamilton had become accustomed to the formula, and took the oft-repeated manoeuvre quite calmly, as "part of the plot"-the stage