f her if she had not
kept that smart housemaid, who looked so much above her station, and
whom the housekeeper had met running about the lanes in the dark, the
very night when Mr. Frost was so ill.

'Pshaw! my dear,' said her husband, 'cannot you let people be judges of
their own affairs?'

It was what he had said on the like occasions for the last thirty
years; but Mrs. Calcott was as wise as ever in other folks' matters.

The fine lady-wife had meanwhile been arranging a little surprise for
her husband. She was too composed to harass herself at his not
returning at midday, she knew him and Kitty to be quite capable of
taking care of each other, and could imagine him detained by parish
work, and disposing of the little maiden with Betty Gervas, or some
other Ormersfield friend, but she had thought him looking fagged and
worried, she feared his being as tired as he had been on the Sunday,
and she could not bear that he should drink tea uncomfortably in the
study, tormented by the children. So she had repaired to the parlour,
and Miss Mercy, after many remonstrances, had settled her there; and
when the good little lady had gone home to her sister's tea, Isabel lay
on the sofa, wrapped in her large soft shawl, languidly attempting a
little work, and feeling the room dreary, and herself very weak, and
forlorn, and desponding, as she thought of James's haggard face, and
the fresh anxieties that would be entailed on him if she should become
sickly and ailing. The tear gathered on her eyelash as she said to
herself, 'I would not exert myself when I could; perhaps now I cannot,
when I would give worlds to lighten one of his cares!' And then she
saw one little bit of furniture standing awry, in the manner that used
so often to worry his fastidious eye; and, in the spirit of doing
anything to please him, she moved across the room to rectify it, and
then sat down in the large easy chair, wearied by the slight exertion,
and becoming even more depressed and hopeless; 'though,' as she told
herself, 'all is sure to be ordered well. The past struggle has been
good--the future will be good if we can but treat it rightly.'

Just as the last gleams were fading on the tops of the Ormersfield
coppices, she heard the hall-door, and James's footstep; and it was
more than the ordinary music of his 'coming up the stair;' there was a
spring and life in it that thrilled into her heart, and glanced in her
eye, as she sat up in her chair,