gh--some too much."

When we were in the carriage I aske Alice which of the books
that she had read she liked too much.

"Some books of verses," she answered. "I do love verses so
much. They give me the same sort of feeling as a fine day, or
like the birds when they sing more sweetly than usual, or when
in a storm the thunder is very loud."

"Whose poems are you speaking of?"

"Lord Byron's; and as I read them, I felt all this more than I
had ever done before, and it was very pleasant. He writes such
beautiful things about the sky and the fields, and the country
and children, that it made me quite happy to read them and
think about them. But then I found that he wrote too of
terrible and wicked things, things that made one tremble and
shudder to think of, so I put that book away, and read it no
more."

"And what did you try next?"

"Some long stories written by Sir Walter Scott."

"You must have liked them?"

"Yes, indeed I did; they are full of good and right things;
and I spent many pleasant hours in reading them. But then,
Ellen, somehow they made me think too much. They gave me
thoughts that were not wrong perhaps, but which were not good
for me. Thoughts that did not help to make me, what St. Paul
says we ought to be, 'content with that state of life in which
God has put us.'"

"So then you left off reading altogether?"

"No, I read my own old books again; I picked out verses and
stories for the happy children in the square, and hymns and
chapters in the Bible for the sick people at the hospital, and
all was right again."

As we drove into Brook-street, I told Alice that we were now
close to Mrs. Middleton's house; but I did not see in her the
least sign of nervousness or agitation at the idea of the
approaching interview. I felt calmer myself than I had
expected, for it seemed to me that, in her presence, Henry
must forget the past; that her husband could not be the Henry
I had known, and whom I so much dreaded to meet again; and
yet, at the same time, I hardly felt as if she was his wife.
As it generally happens when one has speculated much
before-hand, on a person's probable conduct and appearance
under certain circumstances, Alice, as a wife, though exactly
like herself, was quite unlike the various pictures which my
imagination had drawn of her during the last few months. At
times I had fancied her beaming with happiness, loving and
beloved, and in the full enjoyment of those early days of