ted upon each other.'

'You mean Clara's conduct; and dear grandmamma--oh! if she could but
have stayed with us! If you could have seen how haggard and grieved he
came home from Cheveleigh! I do not think he has been quite the same
ever since.'

'And No. 5 has never been the same,' said Louis.

'Tell me,' said Isabel, suddenly, 'are we very poor indeed?'

'I fear so, Isabel. Till James can find some employment, I fear there
is a stern struggle with poverty before you.'

'Does that mean living as the Faithfulls do?'

'Yes, I think your means will be nearly the same as theirs.'

'Fitzjocelyn,' said Isabel, after a long pause, 'I see what you have
been implying all this time, and I have been feeling it too. I have
been absorbed in my own pursuits, and not paid attention enough to
details of management, and so I have helped to fret and vex my husband.
You all think my habits an additional evil in this trial.'

'James has never said a word of the kind,' cried Louis.

'I know he has not; but I ought to have opened my eyes to it long ago,
and I thank you for helping me. There--will you take that manuscript,
and keep it out of my way? It has been a great tempter to me. It is
finished now, and it might bring in something. But I can have only one
thought now--how to make James happier and more at ease.'

'Then, Isabel, I don't think your misfortunes will be misfortunes.'

'To suffer for right principles should give strength for anything,'
said Isabel. 'Think what many better women than I have had to endure,
when they have had to be ashamed of their husband, not proud of him!
Now, I do hope and trust that God will help us, and carry us and the
children through with it!'

Louis felt that in this frame she was truly fit to cheer and sustain
James. How she might endure the actual struggle with penury, he dared
not imagine; at present he could only be carried along by her lofty
composure.

James still lay on his tossed, uncomfortable bed in the evening
twilight. The long, lonely hours, when he imagined Louis to have taken
him at his word and gone home, had given him a miserable sense of
desertion, and as increasing sensations of illness took from him the
hopes of moving on that day, he became distracted at the thought of the
anxiety his silence would cause Isabel, and, after vainly attempting to
write, had been lying with the door open, watching for some approaching
step.

There was the familiar sound of a