dure any other. The first serious disagreement between them had
reference to conduct at the breakfast-table. After a broken night,
feeling headachy and worried, Mr. Jordan took up his newspaper, folded
it conveniently, and set it against the bread so that he could read
while eating. Without a word, his wife gently removed it, and laid it
aside on a chair.

'What are you doing?' he asked gruffly.

'You mustn't read at meals, Archibald. It's bad manners, and bad for your
digestion.'

'I've read the news at breakfast all my life, and I shall do so still,'
exclaimed the husband, starting up and recovering his paper.

'Then you will have breakfast by yourself. Nelly, we must go into the
other room till papa has finished.'

Mr. Jordan ate mechanically, and stared at the newspaper with just as
little consciousness. Prompted by the underlying weakness of his
character to yield for the sake of peace, wrath made him dogged, and the
more steadily he regarded his position, the more was he appalled by the
outlook. Why, this meant downright slavery! He had married a woman so
horribly like himself in several points that his only hope lay in
overcoming her by sheer violence. A thoroughly good and well-meaning
woman, an excellent housekeeper, the kind of wife to do him credit and
improve his social position; but self-willed, pertinacious, and probably
thinking herself his superior in every respect. He had nothing to fear
but subjection--the one thing he had never anticipated, the one thing he
could never endure.

He went off to business without seeing his wife again, and passed a
lamentable day. At his ordinary hour of return, instead of setting off
homeward, he strayed about the by-streets of Islington and Pentonville.
Not till this moment had he felt how dear they were to him, the familiar
streets; their very odours fell sweet upon his nostrils. Never again
could he go hither and thither, among the old friends, the old places,
to his heart's content. What had possessed him to abandon this precious
liberty! The thought of Wood Green revolted him; live there as long as
he might, he would never be at home. He thought of his wife (now waiting
for him) with fear, and then with a reaction of rage. Let her wait!
He--Archibald Jordan--before whom women had bowed and trembled for
five-and-twenty years--was _he_ to come and go at a wife's bidding? And
at length the thought seemed so utterly preposterous that he sped
northward as fast as