the rest of the world. She never mentioned it, for she saw
that it was forbidden ground. Kind and liberal as her husband was in
every other thing, she dared not allude to a matter which had become the
centre of his nervous organization, like an indurated sore; and yet she
saw, from other than selfish considerations, that this hat was his own
worst foe.

Some positive vice--and he had none--some calculating conspiracy--and he
was direct as the day--some base amusement or hidden habit or acrid
disease would hold him in captivity and pervert his heart less than this
simple aberration of behavior. Had he been a hunchback men would have
overlooked it; a hideous goitre or wen they would not have resented; but
extreme gentility or high-bred courtesy could not refrain from turning
to look a second time at a man with a beautiful lady on his arm and a
steeple hat upon his head.

The existence of any subject man and wife must not talk together upon,
which is yet a daily ingredient of comfort and display, itself
disarranges their economy and finally becomes the chronic intruder of
their household; and, when it is a trifle, it seems the more an
obstacle, because there is no reasoning about it.

This Hat had long ceased to be external: it was worn on Milburn's heart
and stifled the healthy throbbing there. It made two men of him,--the
outer and the household man,--and, like the Corsican brothers, they were
ever conscious of each other, and a word to one aroused the other's
clairvoyant sensibility.

"If people would only not observe him," Vesta said, "I think he would
lay his hat aside; but that is impossible, and all his pride is in the
unending conflict with a law of everlasting society. Who sets a fashion,
we do not know; who dares to set one that is obsolete must be a martyr;
independence no one can practise but a lunatic. Oh, what tyranny exists
that no laws can reach, and how much of society is mere formality!"

Vesta pitied her husband, but the disease was beyond her cure. She had
anticipated some compensation for her marriage, in a larger life and
society, and in the exercise of her mind, especially in art and music;
yet these were purely social things with woman, and the baneful hat was
ever darkening her threshold and closing the vista of every other one.
She meditated escaping from it by a visit to Europe, which her father
had promised her before his embarrassments, and which had been spoken of
by Mr. Milburn as due h