reassuring and
persuading him it is. Ah, sir, if ever there was a man in love with
his wife!"

I made no reply. I had previously informed him of her good health, in
answer to a question whose eagerness came of his friendship for
Philip. I asked myself whether his unsuspecting mind was like to
perceive aught that would pain him for Philip's sake, in her
abandonment to the gaieties of the town, to the attentions of the
king's officers, to the business of making herself twice as charming
as the pedagogue had ever seen her.

We got it arranged that our prisoner should be put on parole and
quartered at Mr. Faringfield's house, where his welcome was indeed a
glad one. When Margaret heard of his presence in the town, she gave a
momentary start (it seemed to me a start of self-accusation) and paled
a little; but she composed herself, and asked in a sweet and gracious
(not an eager) tone:

"And Philip?"

I told her all I had learned from Cornelius, to which she listened
with a kindly heedfulness, only sometimes pressing her white teeth
upon her lower lip, and other times dropping her lustrous eyes from my
purposely steady, and perhaps reproachful, gaze.

"So then," said she, as if to be gay at the expense of her husband's
long absence, "now that three years and more have brought him so near
us, maybe another three years or so will bring him back to us!" 'Twas
affected gaiety, one could easily see. Her real feeling must have been
of annoyance that any news of her husband should be obtruded upon her.
She had entered into a way of life that involved forgetfulness of him,
and for which she must reproach herself whenever she thought of him,
but which was too pleasant for her to abandon. But she had the virtue
to be ashamed that reminders of his existence were unwelcome, and
consequently to pretend that she took them amiably; and yet she had
not the hypocrisy to pretend the eager solicitude which a devoted wife
would evince upon receiving news of her long-absent soldier-husband.
Such hypocrisy, indeed, would have appeared ridiculous in a wife who
had scarce mentioned her husband's name, and then only when others
spoke of him, in three years. Yet her very self-reproach for
disregarding him--did it not show that, under all the feelings that
held her to a life of gay coquetry, lay her love for Philip, not dead,
nor always sleeping?

When Cornelius came to the house to live, she met him with a warm
clasp of the hand, and with a s