telling her not to cry, which she felt no inclination to do; and then,
seeing the blank pallor in her face, he suddenly found himself fumbling
for his own pocket-handkerchief.

CHAPTER II.

On this particular July afternoon Mr. Alwynn, or, as his parishioners
called him, "The Honorable John," was sitting in his arm-chair in the
little drawing-room of Slumberleigh Rectory. Mrs. Honorable John was
pouring out tea; and here, once and for all, let it be known that meals,
particularly five o'clock tea, will occupy a large place in this
chronicle, not because of any importance especially attaching to them,
but because in the country, at least in Slumberleigh, the day is not
divided by hours but by the meals that take place therein, and to write
of Slumberleigh and its inhabitants with disregard to their divisions of
time is "impossible, and cannot be done."

So I repeat, boldly, Mr. and Mrs. Alwynn were at tea. They were alone
together, for they had no children, and Ruth Deyncourt, who had been
living with them since her grandmother's death in the winter, was now
staying with her cousin, Mrs. Ralph Danvers, at Atherstone, a couple of
miles away.

If it had occasionally crossed Mr. Alwynn's mind during the last few
months that he would have liked to have a daughter like Ruth, he had
kept the sentiment to himself, as he did most sentiments in the company
of his wife, who, while she complained of his habit of silence, made up
for it nobly herself at all times and in all places. It had often been
the subject of vague wonder among his friends, and even at times to Mr.
Alwynn himself, how he had come to marry "Fanny, my love." Mr. Alwynn
dearly loved peace and quiet, but these dwelt not under the same roof
with Mrs. Alwynn. Nay, I even believe, if the truth were known, he liked
order and tidiness, judging by the exact arrangement of his own study,
and the rueful glances he sometimes cast at the litter of wools and
letters on the newspaper-table, and the gay garden hats and goloshes,
hidden, but not concealed, under the drawing-room sofa. Conversation
about the dearness of butchers' meat and the enormities of servants
palled upon him, I think, after a time, but he had taken his wife's
style of conversation for better for worse when he took her gayly
dressed self under those ominous conditions, and he never showed
impatience. He loved his wife, but I think it grieved him when
smart-colored glass vases were strewn among th