ned upon him that he was beginning to be hungry; from this
to the conclusion stated in the preceding paragraph the steps had been
easy. After a few minutes' further reflection he broached the matter to
his bride, and thus the ice was broken.

Mrs Theobald was not prepared for so sudden an assumption of importance.
Her nerves, never of the strongest, had been strung to their highest
tension by the event of the morning. She wanted to escape observation;
she was conscious of looking a little older than she quite liked to look
as a bride who had been married that morning; she feared the landlady,
the chamber-maid, the waiter--everybody and everything; her heart beat so
fast that she could hardly speak, much less go through the ordeal of
ordering dinner in a strange hotel with a strange landlady. She begged
and prayed to be let off. If Theobald would only order dinner this once,
she would order it any day and every day in future.

But the inexorable Theobald was not to be put off with such absurd
excuses. He was master now. Had not Christina less than two hours ago
promised solemnly to honour and obey him, and was she turning restive
over such a trifle as this? The loving smile departed from his face, and
was succeeded by a scowl which that old Turk, his father, might have
envied. "Stuff and nonsense, my dearest Christina," he exclaimed mildly,
and stamped his foot upon the floor of the carriage. "It is a wife's
duty to order her husband's dinner; you are my wife, and I shall expect
you to order mine." For Theobald was nothing if he was not logical.

The bride began to cry, and said he was unkind; whereon he said nothing,
but revolved unutterable things in his heart. Was this, then, the end of
his six years of unflagging devotion? Was it for this that when
Christina had offered to let him off, he had stuck to his engagement? Was
this the outcome of her talks about duty and spiritual mindedness--that
now upon the very day of her marriage she should fail to see that the
first step in obedience to God lay in obedience to himself? He would
drive back to Crampsford; he would complain to Mr and Mrs Allaby; he
didn't mean to have married Christina; he hadn't married her; it was all
a hideous dream; he would--But a voice kept ringing in his ears which
said: "YOU CAN'T, CAN'T, CAN'T."

"CAN'T I?" screamed the unhappy creature to himself.

"No," said the remorseless voice, "YOU CAN'T. YOU ARE A MARRIED MAN."

He ro