s gratified her. Her husband had
never made any difference. These men were friends of his.

Her bitter sobs ceased, and her wounded vanity gradually lost itself
in better thoughts. Did all her world think of her like the scathing
criticisms of those two chance callers, who thus killed the time of
waiting for someone to come down to them? She began to feel glad that
she had overheard it. The merest accident had sent her into the back
parlor. Was it true? What ought she to do? What could she do? Her dear,
kind husband in trouble, and she the cause. Long she sat buried in
thought, and when the well-known step sounded at the door her face was
radiant with a new resolve.

He came to her large easy-chair with a step somewhat weary, but his kiss
was as usual.

"All right, Nellie? Had a good day? Why, you look--let me see--how do
you look?" he satd, his kind eyes noting the brightness that shone in
hers.

"I look as if I love my big boy very much, don't I?" she responded
merrily.

His answer was another kiss, and as he turned toward his dressing
closet, her heart ached with unspoken tenderness. Her dinner was brought
in. She was not considered strong enough to sit at table. For this
service an extra charge was made.

Later, when he opened the evening paper, she sat and watched him. Surely
those lines of care were new, now that he was not smiling fondly upon
her. Oh, foolish, selfish wife! Rising gently, her long silken tea-gown
trailing behind her, she stood beside him, one slender white hand upon
his shoulder.

"Well, dear, what now? Another new gown?" he asked, with his old, sweet
smile.

She pressed her lips in a slow, reverential fashion, upon the broad
white brow, another pang at her heart. Then she spoke:

"Not this time. Harry, dear, let's go to Mrs. Wickham's to board."

"Mrs. Wickham's!" he echoed. "Why, you wouldn't stay in her dull little
place a week."

But even as he spoke there flashed through his mind in rapid
calculation, "Twenty dollars a week there, forty here; eighty dollars
a month saved; nearly a thousand dollars a year."

"Don't you like it here?" were his next words, as he glanced around the
luxurious suite.

"Yes," she said, "except there are too many people. It is so noisy."

"Very well, then, we will try it; anything to please my darling," and he
drew her close, wrapped in his arms as one might lull a restless child.

The move was made, and Eleanor found that she was not as much fat