ot now go back, even if he could, to his
Cambridge life, but for all that the outlook was so gloomy, in fact so
hopeless, that he felt as if he could have only too gladly gone to sleep
and died in his arm-chair once for all.

As he was musing thus and looking upon the wreck of his hopes--for he saw
well enough that as long as he was linked to Ellen he should never rise
as he had dreamed of doing--he heard a noise below, and presently a
neighbour ran upstairs and entered his room hurriedly--

"Good gracious, Mr Pontifex," she exclaimed, "for goodness' sake come
down quickly and help. O Mrs Pontifex is took with the horrors--and
she's orkard."

The unhappy man came down as he was bid and found his wife mad with
_delirium tremens_.

He knew all now. The neighbours thought he must have known that his wife
drank all along, but Ellen had been so artful, and he so simple, that, as
I have said, he had had no suspicion. "Why," said the woman who had
summoned him, "she'll drink anything she can stand up and pay her money
for." Ernest could hardly believe his ears, but when the doctor had seen
his wife and she had become more quiet, he went over to the public house
hard by and made enquiries, the result of which rendered further doubt
impossible. The publican took the opportunity to present my hero with a
bill of several pounds for bottles of spirits supplied to his wife, and
what with his wife's confinement and the way business had fallen off, he
had not the money to pay with, for the sum exceeded the remnant of his
savings.

He came to me--not for money, but to tell me his miserable story. I had
seen for some time that there was something wrong, and had suspected
pretty shrewdly what the matter was, but of course I said nothing. Ernest
and I had been growing apart for some time. I was vexed at his having
married, and he knew I was vexed, though I did my best to hide it.

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage--but they
are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends. The rift in
friendship which invariably makes its appearance on the marriage of
either of the parties to it was fast widening, as it no less invariably
does, into the great gulf which is fixed between the married and the
unmarried, and I was beginning to leave my _protege_ to a fate with which
I had neither right nor power to meddle. In fact I had begun to feel him
rather a burden; I did not so much mind this when