pier than she in her married lot, or
more unconscious of coming evil. She loved her husband tenderly and
deeply, and he was all to her that she could desire. One sweet child
blessed their union. At the end of the period named, like the sudden
bursting of a fearful tempest from a summer sky, came the illness and
death of her aunt, who had been a mother to her from childhood.

Scarcely had her heart begun to recover from this shock, when it was
startled by another and more terrible affliction. All at once it became
apparent that her husband was losing his self-control. And the
conversation that she had held with her aunt about him, years before,
came up fresh in her memory, like the echo of a warning voice, now
heard, alas! too late. She noticed, with alarm, that he drank largely
of brandy at dinner, and was much stupified when he would rise from the
table--always retiring and sleeping for an hour before going back to
his business. Strange, it seemed to her, that she had never remarked
this before. Now, if she had desired it, she could not close her eyes
to the terrible truth.

For many weeks she bore with the regular daily occurrence of what has
just been alluded to. By that time, her feelings became so excited,
that she could keep silence no longer.

"I wouldn't drink any more brandy, Edward," said she, one day at the
dinner table; "it does you no good."

"How do you know that it does not?" was the prompt reply, made in a
tone that expressed very clearly a rebuke for interfering in a matter
that as he thought, did not concern her.

"I cannot think that it does you any good, and it may do you harm," the
wife said, hesitatingly, while her eyes grew dim with tears.

"Do me harm! What do you mean, Alice?"

"It does harm, sometimes, you know, Edward?"

"That is, it makes drunkards sometimes. And you are afraid that your
husband will become a drunkard! Quite a compliment to him, truly!"

"O, no, no, no, Edward! I am sure you will never be one.
But--but--but--"

"But what?"

"There is always danger, you know, Edward."

"Oh yes, of course! And I am going to be a drunken vagabond, if I keep
on drinking a glass of brandy at dinner time!"

"Don't talk so, Edward!" said Mrs. Lee, giving way to tears. "You never
spoke to me in this way before."

"I know I never did. Nor did my wife ever insinuate before that she
thought me in danger of becoming that debased, despised thing, a
drunkard!"

"Say no more, Edward, in