ess sat. She had been slightly nervous at times during
the evening, but now she appeared thoroughly at ease and glad--glad to
see her husband take his place at the head of his own hospitable board,
in the midst of his own friends and his own people honoured and
beloved. It seemed a good omen--an omen that the bitter things outside
would pass away.

How bitter they had been, and how sore the wife's heart still felt, I
could see from the jealous way in which, smiling and cheerful as her
demeanour was, she caught every look, every word of those around her
which might chance to bear reference to her husband; in her quick
avoidance of every topic connected with these disastrous times, and,
above all, in her hurried grasp of a newspaper that some careless
servant brought in fresh from the night-mail, wet with sleet and snow.

"Do you get your country paper regularly?" asked some one at table. And
then some others appeared to recollect the Norton Bury Mercury, and its
virulent attacks on their host--for there ensued an awkward pause,
during which I saw Ursula's face beginning to burn. But she conquered
her wrath.

"There is often much interest in our provincial papers, Sir Herbert. My
husband makes a point of taking them all in--bad and good--of every
shade of politics. He believes it is only by hearing all sides that
you can truly judge of the state of the country."

"Just as a physician must hear all symptoms before he decides on the
patient's case. At least, so our good old friend Doctor Jessop used to
say."

"Eh?" said Mr. Jessop the banker, catching his own name, and waking up
from a brown study, in which he had seemed to see nothing--except,
perhaps, the newspaper, which, in its printed cover, lay between
himself and Mrs. Halifax. "Eh? did any one--Oh, I beg pardon--beg
pardon--Sir Herbert," hastily added the old man; who was a very meek
and worthy soul, and had been perhaps more subdued than usual this
evening.

"I was referring," said Sir Herbert, with his usual ponderous civility,
"to your excellent brother, who was so much respected among us,--for
which respect, allow me to say, he did not leave us without an
inheritor."

The old banker answered the formal bow with a kind of nervous hurry;
and then Sir Herbert, with a loud premise of his right as the oldest
friend of our family, tried to obtain silence for the customary speech,
prefatory to the customary toast of "Health and prosperity to the heir
of