hings stood,
swallowed down my annoyance at having so stupidly interfered in so
tender a matter, and took leave under the pretext that my wife was
waiting for me to pay a visit.

"A visit on Whit Monday afternoon when no one is at home! but so one
stumbles on from one discrepancy to another.

"Accordingly the series of my mortifications was not yet over for that
particular day; for when I had got home to my good wife, and given her
a true and faithful account of where I had been, and what I had seen
and heard, and finally (though indeed her silence in listening
foreboded no good), added: 'It would be a real comfort to me if I could
do something for the pretty child, and might it not be as well to offer
her our spare room as it chanced to be empty,'--a small matrimonial
tempest burst at once, which I had passively to endure. My wife had,
indeed, long been upon the point of telling me that this Van Kuylen
exercised the worst influence over me, and was the most unfit
companion; a frivolous bachelor who had no respect for holy things,
and had already infected me with his mocking and blasphemous spirit.
She had supposed, when she married a landscape painter, that her
house would at least be free from such a disreputable set as models
generally are, lost to all sense of decency and shame, and of whom the
most horrible stories were heard. And now I had returned from that
trumpery Dutchman, not only with my clothes reeking of the very worst
tobacco-smoke, but in such a wholly perverted state of mind, and with
such entire forgetfulness of what was due to a virtuous young wife,
that I could actually propose to her to receive into our family this
suspicious person, who had turned my head with her bit of prettiness
and her dubious adventures. Rather than consent to such a step, she
would take her innocent children in her arms, and at once leave the
field clear; for it was too plain to see from the fervour with which I
had proposed this fine plan, what must eventually come of it. And so
saying, she caught up our little Christopher who had tripped in, with
such a passionate burst of tears, and pressed his small fair head so
closely to her breast, it seemed as if she would fain save the poor
harmless child from the evil eye of a sinful father who had irrevocably
made over his soul to him who shall be nameless.

"I had no small difficulty in allaying the excitement of my dear
better-half; she was generally patience and self-abnegati