home so wretched that I cannot
bear it. I'm ashamed to do that. I ought not to be telling you all this,
of course. I don't know what he'd do if he knew it; but it is so hard to
bear it all without telling some one."

"My poor dear!"

"I sometimes think I'll ask Mr. Clavering to speak to him, and to tell
him at once that I will not submit to it any longer. Of course he would
be mad with rage, but if he were to kill me I should like it better than
having to go on in this way. I'm sure he is only waiting for me to die."

Mrs. Clavering said all that she could to comfort the poor woman, but
there was not much that she could say. She had strongly advocated the
plan of having Lady Ongar at the Park, thinking perhaps that Harry would
be more safe while that lady was at Clavering, than he might perhaps be
if she remained in London. But Mrs. Clavering doubted much whether Lady
Ongar would consent to make such a visit. She regarded Lady Ongar as a
hard, worldly, pleasure-seeking woman--sinned against perhaps in much,
but also sinning in much herself--to whom the desolation of the Park
would be even more unendurable than it was to the elder sister. But of
this, of course, she said nothing. Lady Clavering left her, somewhat
quieted, if not comforted; and went back to pass her last evening with
her husband.

"Upon second thought, I'll go by the first train," he said, as he saw
her for a moment before she went up to dress. "I shall have to be off
from here a little after six, but I don't mind that in Summer." Thus she
was to be deprived of such gratification as there might have been in
breakfasting with him on the last morning! It might be hard to say in
what that gratification would have consisted. She must by this time have
learned that his presence gave her none of the pleasures usually
expected from society. He slighted her in everything. He rarely
vouchsafed to her those little attentions which all women expect from
all gentlemen. If he handed her a plate, or cut for her a morsel of
bread from the loaf, he showed by his manner, and by his brow, that the
doing so was a nuisance to him. At their meals he rarely spoke to
her--having always at breakfast a paper or a book before him, and at
dinner devoting his attention to a dog at his feet. Why should she have
felt herself cruelly ill-used in this matter of his last breakfast--so
cruelly ill-used that she wept afresh over it as she dressed
herself--seeing that she would lose so