that
evening. His headache had grown worse, and he wished, wished at every
step he took, that the lie he had to tell to his wife was over and done
with. There was no repentance of the decision which, it seemed on
looking back, he had arrived at involuntarily. The coin which made his
pocket heavy meant joy to those at home, and, if he got it wrongfully,
the wrong was so dubious, so shadowy, that it vanished in comparison
with the good that would be done. It was not--he said to himself--as if
he had committed a theft to dissipate the proceeds, like that young
fellow who ran away from the Dunfield and County Bank some months ago,
and was caught in London with disreputable associates. Here was a
ten-pound note lying, one might say, by the very roadside, and it would
save a family from privation. Abstractly, it was wrong; yes, it was
wrong; but would abstract right feed him and pay his rent for the year
to come? Hood had reached this stage in his self-examination; he
strengthened himself by protest against the order of things. His
headache nursed the tendency to an active discontent, to which, as a
rule, his temperament did not lend itself.

But there remained the telling of the lie. How he wished that Emily were
not at home! To lie before Emily, that was the hardest part of his
self-imposed task. He could not respect his wife, but before Emily,
since her earliest companionship with him, he had watched his words
scrupulously; as a little girl she had so impressed him with the purity
of her heart that his love for her had been the nearest approach he ever
knew to the spirit of worship; and since her attainment of mental and
moral independence, his reverence for' her had not been unmixed with
awe. When her eyes met his, he felt the presence of a nature
indefinitely nobler than his own; not seldom he marvelled in his dim way
that such a one called him father. Could he ever after this day approach
her with the old confidence? Nay, he feared her. His belief in her
insight was almost a superstition. Would she not read the falsehood upon
his face?

Strange state of mind; at one and the same time he wished that he had
thought of Emily sooner, and was glad that he had not. That weight in
his pocket was after all a joyous one, and to have been conscious of
Emily as he now was, might--would--have made him by so much a poorer
man.

She, as usual, was at the door to meet him, her face even ladder than
its wont, for this morning there