e better for Mr.
Butler to give away the dole, and that Sir John would himself visit the
recipients during the week. Then we hurried away, not daring to watch
the distribution of the dole, lest we should no longer be able to master
our feelings, and should openly betray our agitation.

From one another we no longer attempted to conceal our grief. It seemed
as though we had all at once resolved to abandon the farce of pretending
not to notice John's estrangement from his wife, or of explaining away
his neglectful and unaccountable treatment of her.

I do not think that three poor women were ever so sad on Christmas Day
before as were we on our return from church that morning. None of us had
seen my brother, but about five in the afternoon Constance went to his
room, and through the locked door begged piteously to see him. After a
few minutes he complied with her request and opened the door. The exact
circumstances of that interview she never revealed to me, but I knew
from her manner when she returned that something she had seen or heard
had both grieved and frightened her. She told me only that she had flung
herself in an agony of tears at his feet, and kneeling there, weary and
broken-hearted, had begged him to tell her if she had done aught amiss,
had prayed him to give her back his love. To all this he answered
little, but her entreaties had at least such an effect as to induce him
to take his dinner with us that evening. At that meal we tried to put
aside our gloom, and with feigned smiles and cheerful voices, from which
the tears were hardly banished, sustained a weary show of conversation
and tried to wile away his evil mood. But he spoke little; and when
Foster, my father's butler, put on the table the three-handled
Maltravers' loving-cup that he had brought up Christmas by Christmas for
thirty years, my brother merely passed it by without a taste. I saw by
Foster's face that the master's malady was no longer a secret even from
the servants.

I shall not harass my own feelings nor yours, my dear Edward, by
entering into further details of your father's illness, for such it was
obvious his indisposition had become. It was the only consolation, and
that was a sorry one, that we could use with Constance, to persuade her
that John's estrangement from her was merely the result or manifestation
of some physical infirmity. He obviously grew worse from week to week,
and his treatment of his wife became colder and more