like of
her? She has no sobriety and no economy--as for gratitude, you will as
soon get milk from a whinstone; and if you will pretermit your bounty,
it will make no change at all but just to save the ankles of your
messengers."

Mr. Henry smiled. "But I am grieved about your ankle," said he the next
moment, with a proper gravity.

"And observe," I continued, "I give you this advice upon consideration;
and yet my heart was touched for the woman in the beginning."

"Why, there it is, you see!" said Mr. Henry. "And you are to remember
that I knew her once a very decent lass. Besides which, although I speak
little of my family, I think much of its repute."

And with that he broke up the talk, which was the first we had together
in such confidence. But the same afternoon I had the proof that his
father was perfectly acquainted with the business, and that it was only
from his wife that Mr. Henry kept it secret.

"I fear you had a painful errand to-day," says my lord to me, "for
which, as it enters in no way among your duties, I wish to thank you,
and to remind you at the same time (in case Mr. Henry should have
neglected) how very desirable it is that no word of it should reach my
daughter. Reflections on the dead, Mr. Mackellar, are doubly painful."

Anger glowed in my heart; and I could have told my lord to his face how
little he had to do, bolstering up the image of the dead in Mrs. Henry's
heart, and how much better he were employed to shatter that false idol;
for by this time I saw very well how the land lay between my patron and
his wife.

My pen is clear enough to tell a plain tale; but to render the effect of
an infinity of small things, not one great enough in itself to be
narrated; and to translate the story of looks, and the message of voices
when they are saying no great matter; and to put in half a page the
essence of near eighteen months--this is what I despair to accomplish.
The fault, to be very blunt, lay all in Mrs. Henry. She felt it a merit
to have consented to the marriage, and she took it like a martyrdom; in
which my old lord, whether he knew it or not, fomented her. She made a
merit, besides, of her constancy to the dead, though its name, to a
nicer conscience, should have seemed rather disloyalty to the living;
and here also my lord gave her his countenance. I suppose he was glad to
talk of his loss, and ashamed to dwell on it with Mr. Henry. Certainly,
at least, he made a little coterie apar