ner-hour. She was resting her head on her
hand, and puzzled and distressed about many things--all that was
implied by the proceedings of the evening before between Philip and
Sylvia; and that was confirmed by Philip's miserable looks and
strange abstracted ways to-day. Oh! how easy Hester would have found
it to make him happy! not merely how easy, but what happiness it
would have been to her to merge her every wish into the one great
object of fulfiling his will. To her, an on-looker, the course of
married life, which should lead to perfect happiness, seemed to
plain! Alas! it is often so! and the resisting forces which make all
such harmony and delight impossible are not recognized by the
bystanders, hardly by the actors. But if these resisting forces are
only superficial, or constitutional, they are but the necessary
discipline here, and do not radically affect the love which will
make all things right in heaven.

Some glimmering of this latter comforting truth shed its light on
Hester's troubled thoughts from time to time. But again, how easy
would it have been to her to tread the maze that led to Philip's
happiness; and how difficult it seemed to the wife he had chosen!

She was aroused by Dr Morgan's voice.

'So both Coulson and Hepburn have left the shop to your care,
Hester. I want Hepburn, though; his wife is in a very anxious state.
Where is he? can you tell me?'

'Sylvia in an anxious state! I've not seen her to-day, but last
night she looked as well as could be.'

'Ay, ay; but many a thing happens in four-and-twenty hours. Her
mother is dying, may be dead by this time; and her husband should be
there with her. Can't you send for him?'

'I don't know where he is,' said Hester. 'He went off from here all
on a sudden, when there was all the market-folks in t' shop; I
thought he'd maybe gone to John Foster's about th' money, for they
was paying a deal in. I'll send there and inquire.'

No! the messenger brought back word that he had not been seen at
their bank all morning. Further inquiries were made by the anxious
Hester, by the doctor, by Coulson; all they could learn was that
Phoebe had seen him pass the kitchen window about eleven o'clock,
when she was peeling the potatoes for dinner; and two lads playing
on the quay-side thought they had seen him among a group of sailors;
but these latter, as far as they could be identified, had no
knowledge of his appearance among them.

Before night the whole to