have a scandal: so her education was
complete, and home she went. Now the first time we are out for a walk
and he passes us and bows, you watch."

Miss Julia Arden went to sleep directly she went to bed, but Catharine,
contrary to her usual custom, lay awake till she heard twelve o'clock
strike from St. Mary, Abchurch. She started, and thought that she alone,
perhaps, of all the people who lay within reach of those chimes had heard
them. Why did she not go to sleep? She was unused to wakefulness, and
its novelty surprised her with all sorts of vague terrors. She turned
from side to side anxiously while midnight sounded, but she was young,
and in ten minutes afterwards she was dreaming. She was mistaken in
supposing that she was the only person awake in Abchurch that night. Mrs.
Cardew heard the chimes, and over her their soothing melody had no power.
When she and her husband left the Limes he broke out at once, with all
the eagerness with which a man begins when he has been repeating to
himself for some time every word of his grievance--

"I don't know how it is, Jane, but whenever I say anything I feel you are
just the one person on whom it seems to make an impression. You have a
trick of repetition, and you manage to turn everything into a platitude.
If you cannot do better than that, you might be silent."

He was right so far, that it is possible by just a touch to convert the
noblest sentiment into commonplace. No more than a touch is necessary.
The parabolic mirror will reflect the star to a perfect focus. The
elliptical mirror, varying from the parabola by less than the breadth of
a hair, throws an image which is useless. But Mr. Cardew was far more
wrong than he was right. He did not take into account that what his wife
said and what she felt might not be the same; that persons, who have no
great command over language, are obliged to make one word do duty for a
dozen, and that, if his wife was defective at one point, there were in
her whole regions of unexplored excellence, of faculties never
encouraged, and an affection to which he offered no response. He had not
learned the art of being happy with her: he did not know that happiness
is an art: he rather did everything he could do to make the relationship
intolerable. He demanded payment in coin stamped from his own mint, and
if bullion and jewels had been poured before him he would have taken no
heed of them.

She said nothing. She never answe