--I do
think you are very hard upon him about Nan."

Mr. Mayne stared at her in speechless amazement. Bessie, his
long-suffering Bessie,--the wife of his bosom, over whom he had a
right to tyrannize,--even she had turned against him, and had taken
his son's part. "Et tu, Brute!" he could have said, in his bitterness;
but his wrath was too great.

"I tell you what," he said, rising from the seat that was no longer
restful to him, and pointing his finger at her, "you and your boy
together will be the death of me."

"Oh, Richard, how can you be so wicked?"

"Oh, I am wicked, am I? That is a nice wifely speech."

"Yes, you are, when you say such things to me!" she returned, plucking
up spirit that amazed herself afterwards. "If you do not know when you
have a good wife and son, I am sorry for you. I say again, I think you
are making a grievous mistake, Richard. Dick's heart is set on the
girl; and I don't wonder at it, a dear pretty creature like that. And
if you cross him, and set him wrong, you will have to answer to both
of us for the consequences." And then she, too, rose, trembling in
every limb, and with her comely face very much flushed. Even a worm
will turn, and Bessie Mayne had for once ventured to speak the truth
to her husband.

She had the victory that night, for he was too much dumbfounded by her
rebellion to indulge in his usual recriminations: he had never
imagined before that Bessie owned a will of her own; but he felt now,
with a pang of wounded self-love, that the younger Richard had proved
a formidable rival.

His wife's heart relented when she saw his moody looks; but he would
not be reconciled to her, in spite of her coaxing speeches.

"Come Richard,--come, my dear! you must not be so cross with me," she
said to him later on that night. "We have been married
three-and-twenty years, and have never had a serious quarrel; and I
don't like your black looks at me."

"Then you should not anger me by taking that boy's part," was his only
answer; and he could not be induced to say anything more conciliatory.
And the poor woman went to bed weeping.

Things were in this uncomfortable state, when, one morning, Dick
thrust his head into the study where his father was jotting down some
household accounts; for he managed all such minor details himself,
much to his wife's relief.

"Are you particularly busy, father?--I want to have a talk with you."

Mr. Mayne looked up quickly, and his bushy eyebrows