certainly did not understand his ideas. "Whatever we do we must
hold our heads up. I think he is coming round to cotton to me. He is
very close, but I can see that he likes my going to him. Of course,
as he grows older from day to day, he'll constantly want some one to
lean on more than heretofore."

"I would go and stay with him if he wanted me."

"I have thought of that too. Now that would be a saving,--without any
fall. And if we were both there we could hardly fail to know what he
was doing. You could offer that, couldn't you? You could say as much
as that?"

"I could ask him if he wished it."

"Just so. Say that it occurs to you that he is lonely by himself, and
that we will both go to the Square at a moment's notice if he thinks
it will make him comfortable. I feel sure that that will be the best
step to take. I have already had an offer for these rooms, and could
get rid of the things we have bought to advantage."

This, too, was terrible to her, and at the same time altogether
unintelligible. She had been invited to buy little treasures to make
their home comfortable, and had already learned to take that delight
in her belongings which is one of the greatest pleasures of a young
married woman's life. A girl in her old home, before she is given up
to a husband, has many sources of interest, and probably from day to
day sees many people. And the man just married goes out to his work,
and occupies his time, and has his thickly-peopled world around him.
But the bride, when the bridal honours of the honeymoon are over,
when the sweet care of the first cradle has not yet come to her, is
apt to be lonely and to be driven to the contemplation of the pretty
things with which her husband and her friends have surrounded her. It
had certainly been so with this young bride, whose husband left her
in the morning and only returned for their late dinner. And now she
was told that her household gods had had a price put upon them and
that they were to be sold. She had intended to suggest that she would
pay her father a visit, and her husband immediately proposed that
they should quarter themselves permanently on the old man! She was
ready to give up her brougham, though she liked the comfort of it
well enough; but to that he would not consent because the possession
of it gave him an air of wealth; but without a moment's hesitation
he could catch at the idea of throwing upon her father the burden of
maintaining both her and