the room unexpectedly just now,
and found her in tears.

"With considerable difficulty I persuaded her to tell me what had
happened. Are there any limits to the mischief that can be done by the
tongue of a foolish woman? The landlady at my lodgings is the woman, in
this case. Having no decided plans for the future as yet, we returned
(most unfortunately, as the event has proved) to the rooms in London
which I inhabited in my bachelor days. They are still mine for six weeks
to come, and Mercy was unwilling to let me incur the expense of taking
her to a hotel. At breakfast this morning I rashly congratulated myself
(in my wife's hearing) on finding that a much smaller collection than
usual of letters and cards had accumulated in my absence. Breakfast
over, I was obliged to go out. Painfully sensitive, poor thing, to
any change in my experience of the little world around me which it is
possible to connect with the event of my marriage, Mercy questioned the
landlady, in my absence, about the diminished number of my visitors and
my correspondents. The woman seized the opportunity of gossiping
about me and my affairs, and my wife's quick perception drew the right
conclusion unerringly. My marriage has decided certain wise heads of
families on discontinuing their social relations with me. The facts,
unfortunately, speak for themselves. People who in former years
habitually called upon me and invited me--or who, in the event of my
absence, habitually wrote to me at this season--have abstained with a
remarkable unanimity from calling, inviting, or writing now.

"It would have been sheer waste of time--to say nothing of its also
implying a want of confidence in my wife--if I had attempted to set
things right by disputing Mercy's conclusion. I could only satisfy her
that not so much as the shadow of disappointment or mortification rested
on my mind. In this way I have, to some extent, succeeded in composing
my poor darling. But the wound has been inflicted, and the wound is
felt. There is no disguising that result. I must face it boldly.

"Trifling as this incident is in my estimation, it has decided me on one
point already. In shaping my future course I am now resolved to act on
my own convictions--in preference to taking the well-meant advice of
such friends as are still left to me.

"All my little success in life has been gained in the pulpit. I am what
is termed a popular preacher--but I have never, in my secret self, felt