riends whom their wives
best love, and Mr. Dockwrath was one of these. He had never given
his cordial consent to the intercourse which had hitherto existed
between the lady of Orley Farm and his household, although he had not
declined the substantial benefits which had accompanied it. His pride
had rebelled against the feeling of patronage, though his interest
had submitted to the advantages thence derived. A family of sixteen
children is a heavy burden for a country attorney with a small
practice, even though his wife may have had a fortune of two thousand
pounds; and thus Mr. Dockwrath, though he had never himself loved
Lady Mason, had permitted his wife to accept all those numberless
kindnesses which a lady with comfortable means and no children is
always able to bestow on a favoured neighbour who has few means and
many children. Indeed, he himself had accepted a great favour with
reference to the holding of those two fields, and had acknowledged as
much when first he took them into his hands some sixteen or seventeen
years back. But all that was forgotten now; and having held them for
so long a period, he bitterly felt the loss, and resolved that it
would ill become him as a man and an attorney to allow so deep an
injury to pass unnoticed. It may be, moreover, that Mr. Dockwrath was
now doing somewhat better in the world than formerly, and that he
could afford to give up Lady Mason, and to demand also that his wife
should give her up. Those trumpery presents from Orley Farm were very
well while he was struggling for bare bread, but now, now that he had
turned the corner,--now that by his divine art and mystery of law
he had managed to become master of that beautiful result of British
perseverance, a balance at his banker's, he could afford to indulge
his natural antipathy to a lady who had endeavoured in early life
to divert from him the little fortune which had started him in the
world.

Miriam Dockwrath, as she sat on this morning, listening to her
husband's anger, with a sick little girl on her knee, and four or
five others clustering round her, half covered with their matutinal
bread and milk, was mild-eyed and soft as ever. Hers was a nature in
which softness would ever prevail;--softness, and that tenderness of
heart, always leaning, and sometimes almost crouching, of which a
mild eye is the outward sign. But her comeliness and prettiness were
gone. Female beauty of the sterner, grander sort may support the