ignified, and even vulgar;
he had never thought himself wanting in energy, though probably he had
left the business to take its own course in the old lines more than
he realized. Things had always gone so smoothly that he had sometimes
fancied a peculiar regard for him in the management, which he had the
weakness to attribute to an appreciation of what he occasionally did
in literature, though in saner moments he felt how impossible this was.
Beyond a reference from Mr. Hubbell to some piece of March's which had
happened to meet his eye, no one in the management ever gave a sign of
consciousness that their service was adorned by an obscure literary man;
and Mr. Hubbell himself had the effect of regarding the excursions of
March's pen as a sort of joke, and of winking at them; as he might have
winked if once in a way he had found him a little the gayer for dining.

March wore through the day gloomily, but he had it on his conscience not
to show any resentment toward Watkins, whom he suspected of wishing to
supplant him, and even of working to do so. Through this self-denial he
reached a better mind concerning his wife. He determined not to make
her suffer needlessly, if the worst came to the worst; she would suffer
enough, at the best, and till the worst came he would spare her, and not
say anything about the letter he had got.

But when they met, her first glance divined that something had happened,
and her first question frustrated his generous intention. He had to tell
her about the letter. She would not allow that it had any significance,
but she wished him to make an end of his anxieties and forestall
whatever it might portend by resigning his place at once. She said she
was quite ready to go to New York; she had been thinking it all over,
and now she really wanted to go. He answered, soberly, that he had
thought it over, too; and he did not wish to leave Boston, where he had
lived so long, or try a new way of life if he could help it. He insisted
that he was quite selfish in this; in their concessions their quarrel
vanished; they agreed that whatever happened would be for the best; and
the next day he went to his office fortified for any event.

His destiny, if tragical, presented itself with an aspect which he might
have found comic if it had been another's destiny. Mr. Hubbell brought
March's removal, softened in the guise of a promotion. The management at
New York, it appeared, had acted upon a suggestion of Mr