unts in the various papers, by
broken efforts, taking them as if in successive shocks from these
terrible particulars, which seemed to shower themselves upon him when he
came in range of them, till he felt bruised and beaten all over.

"Well, at least, it's out, my dear," said his wife, who noted the final
effect of his sufferings across the table, and saw him pause bewildered
from the last paper he had dropped. "There's that comfort."

"Is that a comfort?" he asked, huskily.

"Why, yes, I think it is. The suspense is over, and now you can begin to
pick yourself up."

"I suppose there's something in that." He kept looking at Matt, or
rather, at the copy of the _Abstract_ which Matt was hiding behind, and
he said, "What have you got there, Matt?"

"Perhaps I'd better read it out," said Matt. "It seems to me most
uncommonly good. I wonder who could have done it!"

"Suppose you do your wondering afterwards," said his father impatiently;
and Matt began to read. The positions of the article were not such as
Hilary could have taken, probably, if he had been in a different mood;
its implications were, some of them, such as he must have decidedly
refused; but the temper of the whole was so humane, so forbearing, so
enlightened, that Hilary was in a glow of personal gratitude to the
writer, for what he called his common decency, by the time the reading
was over. "That is a very extraordinary article," he said, and he joined
Matt in wondering who could have done it, with the usual effect in such
cases.

"I wish," said Mrs. Hilary, "that every other newspaper could be kept
from those poor things." She meant Northwick's daughters, and she added,
"If they must know the facts, they couldn't be more mercifully told
them."

"Why, that was what I was thinking, mother," said Matt. "But they can't
be kept to this version, unhappily. The misery will have to come on them
shapelessly, as all our miseries do. I don't know that the other papers
are so bad--"

"Not bad!" cried his father.

"No. They're not unkind to them, except as they are just to him. They
probably represent fairly enough the average thinking and feeling about
the matter; the thing they'll have to meet all their lives and get used
to. But I wish I knew who did this _Abstract_ article; I should like to
thank him."

"The question is, now," said Mrs. Hilary, "What can we do for them
there? Are you sure you made it clear to them, Matt, that we were
willing to have