t of our own particular choice, or that
such a selfish idolatry is a domestic crime.

It was a very unhappy time to Charlotte. Her mother was weary with many
unusual cares, her father more silent and depressed than she had ever
before seen him. The sunny serenity of her happy home was disturbed by a
multitude of new elements, for an atmosphere of constant expectation
gave a restless tone to its usual placid routine. And through all and
below all, there was that feeling of money perplexity, which, where it
exists, is no more to be hid than the subtle odor of musk, present
though unseen.

This year the white winter appeared to Charlotte interminable in length.
The days in which it was impossible to go out, full of Sophia's sewing
and little worries and ostentations; the windy, tempestuous nights, that
swept the gathering drifts away; the cloudless moonlight nights, full of
that awful, breathless quiet that broods in land-locked dales,--all of
them, and all of Nature's moods, had become inexpressibly, monotonously
wearisome before the change came. But one morning at the end of March,
there was a great west wind charged with heavy rains, and in a few hours
the snow on all the fells had been turned into rushing floods, that came
roaring down from every side into the valley.

"'Oh, wind!
If winter comes, can spring be far behind?'"

quoted Charlotte, as she stood watching the white cascades.

"It will be cuckoo time directly my dear; and the lambs will be bleating
on the fells, and the yellow primroses blowing under all the hedges. I
want to see the swallows take the storm on their wings badly this year.
Eh? What, Charlotte?"

"So do I, father. I never was so tired of the house before."

"There's a bit of a difference lately, I think. Eh? What?"

Charlotte looked at him; there was no need to speak. They both
understood and felt the full misery of household changes that are not
entirely happy ones; changes that bring unfaithfulness and ingratitude
on one side, and resentful, wounded love on the other. And the worst of
it all was, that it might have been so different. Why had the lovers set
themselves apart from the family, had secrets and consultations and
interests they refused to share? How had it happened that Sophia had
come to consider her welfare as apart from, and in opposition to, that
of the general welfare of Seat-Sandal? And when this feeling existed, it
seemed unjust to Charlotte that t