dining parlor of their elegant Broadway mansion.
The gentleman looked somewhat pale and ill at ease, but the lady had
never looked more superbly beautiful.

The table was waited upon by Davis, the butler, a respectable looking
man of middle age, and Mr. Sydney, from time to time, glanced furtively
from his wife to this man, with a very peculiar expression of
countenance.

'My love,' said Mrs. Sydney, after a pause of several minutes--'I have a
little favor to ask.'

'You have but to name it, Julia, to ensure it being granted,' was the
reply.

'It is this,' said the lady;--'our present footman is a stupid Irishman,
clumsy and awkward; and I really wish him to be discharged. And, my
dear, I should be delighted to have the place filled by my father's
black footman, who is called Nero. He is civil and attentive, and has
been in my father's family many years. Let us receive him into our
household.'

'Well Julia,' said the husband, 'I will consider on the subject. I
should not like to part with our present footman, Dennis, without some
reluctance--for though uncouth in his manners, he is an honest fellow,
and has served me faithfully for many years. _Honest_ servants are
exceedingly scarce now-a-days.'

As he uttered these last words, Davis, the butler, cast a sudden and
suspicious look upon his master, who appeared to be busily engaged with
the contents of his plate, but who in reality was steadfastly regarding
him from the corner of his eyes.

As soon as dinner was over, the lady retired to her _boudoir_; Davis
removed the cloth and Mr. Sydney was left alone. After taking two or
three turns up and down the room, he paused before the fireplace and
soliloquized thus:

'Curses on my unhappy situation! My wife is an adulteress, and my
servants in league with villains to rob me! These two letters confirm
the first--and my last night's adventure in the Dark Vaults convinced me
of the second. And then the woman just now had the damnable effrontery
to request me to take her rascally paramour into my service, in place of
my faithful Dennis! She wishes to carry on her amours under my very
nose! And that scoundrel Davis--how demure, how innocently he looks--and
yet how suspiciously he glanced at me, when I emphasized _honest_
servants! He is a cursed villain, and yet not one-tenth part so guilty
as this woman, whom I espoused in honorable marriage, supposing her to
be pure and untainted and yet who was, previous to our mar