is dinner, and sleeps. At home, as you
know, not only did he take an active part in politics, but
he was active also in the management of his own property.
Now it seems to him to be almost too great a trouble to
write a letter to his steward; and all this has come upon
him because of me. He is here because he cannot bear that
I should live alone. I have offered to return with him to
Saulsby, thinking that Mr. Kennedy would trouble me no
further,--or to remain here by myself; but he will consent
to neither. In truth the burden of idleness has now fallen
upon him so heavily that he cannot shake it off. He dreads
that he may be called upon to do anything.

To me it is all one tragedy. I cannot but think of things
as they were two or three years since. My father and my
husband were both in the Cabinet, and you, young as you
were, stood but one step below it. Oswald was out in the
cold. He was very poor. Papa thought all evil of him.
Violet had refused him over and over again. He quarrelled
with you, and all the world seemed against him. Then of a
sudden you vanished, and we vanished. An ineffable misery
fell upon me and upon my wretched husband. All our good
things went from us at a blow. I and my poor father became
as it were outcasts. But Oswald suddenly retricked his
beams, and is flaming in the forehead of the morning sky.
He, I believe, has no more than he had deserved. He won
his wife honestly;--did he not? And he has ever been
honest. It is my pride to think I never gave him up. But
the bitter part of my cup consists in this,--that as he
has won what he has deserved, so have we. I complain of no
injustice. Our castle was built upon the sand. Why should
Mr. Kennedy have been a Cabinet Minister;--and why should
I have been his wife? There is no one else of whom I can
ask that question as I can of you, and no one else who can
answer it as you can do.

Of Mr. Kennedy it is singular how little I know, and how
little I ever hear. There is no one whom I can ask to tell
me of him. That he did not attend during the last Session
I do know, and we presume that he has now abandoned his
seat. I fear that his health is bad,--or perhaps, worse
still, that his mind is affected by the gloom of his life.
I suppose that he lives exclusively at Loughlinter. From
time to time I am implored by him to return to m