id to himself. In the meantime the
blustrous March weather, which was so unsuited to long railroad
journeys, and all that waiting about at junctions and at little windy
stations on branch lines, incidental to the inspection of estates
scattered over a large area of country, served very well for
"jolly-dog-ism;" and what with a hand at cards in George Sheldon's
chambers, and another hand at cards in somebody else's chambers, and a
run down to an early meeting at Newmarket, and an evening at some rooms
where there was something to be seen which was as near prize-fighting
as the law allowed, and other evenings in unknown regions, Mr. Halliday
found time slipping by him, and his domestic peace vanishing away.

It was on an evening at the end of this third week that Mr. Sheldon
abandoned his mechanical dentistry for once in a way, and ascended to
the drawing-room where poor Georgy sat busy with that eternal
needlework, but for which melancholy madness would surely overtake many
desolate matrons in houses whose common place comfort and respectable
dulness are more dismal than the picturesque dreariness of a moated
grange amid the Lincolnshire fens. To the masculine mind this
needlework seems nothing more than a purposeless stabbing and sewing of
strips of calico; but to lonely womanhood it is the prison-flower of
the captive, it is the spider of Latude.

Mr. Sheldon brought his guest an evening newspaper.

"There's an account of the opening of Parliament," he said, "which you
may perhaps like to see. I wish I had a piano, or some female
acquaintances to drop in upon you. I am afraid you must be dull in
these long evenings when Tom is out of the way."

"I am indeed dull," Mrs. Halliday answered peevishly; "and if Tom cared
for me, he wouldn't leave me like this evening after evening. But he
doesn't care for me."

Mr Sheldon laid down the newspaper, and seated himself opposite his
guest. He sat for a few minutes in silence, beating time to some
imaginary air with the tips of his fingers on the old-fashioned
mahogany table. Then he said, with a half-smile upon his face,--

"But surely Tom is the best of husbands! He has been a little wild
since his coming to London, I know; but then you see he doesn't often
come to town."

"He's just as bad in Yorkshire," Georgy answered gloomily; "he's always
going to Barlingford with somebody or other, or to meet some of his old
friends. I'm sure, if I had known what he was, I would ne