h a sigh of relief which seemed to say: "I have done it, and I
am alive." This was the reaction after a burst of enthusiastic merriment
during which the old gentleman had run twenty yards after the carriage to
fling a slipper at it--which he had duly flung.

But what were the feelings of Theobald and Christina when the village was
passed and they were rolling quietly by the fir plantation? It is at
this point that even the stoutest heart must fail, unless it beat in the
breast of one who is over head and ears in love. If a young man is in a
small boat on a choppy sea, along with his affianced bride and both are
sea-sick, and if the sick swain can forget his own anguish in the
happiness of holding the fair one's head when she is at her worst--then
he is in love, and his heart will be in no danger of failing him as he
passes his fir plantation. Other people, and unfortunately by far the
greater number of those who get married must be classed among the "other
people," will inevitably go through a quarter or half an hour of greater
or less badness as the case may be. Taking numbers into account, I
should think more mental suffering had been undergone in the streets
leading from St George's, Hanover Square, than in the condemned cells of
Newgate. There is no time at which what the Italians call _la figlia
della Morte_ lays her cold hand upon a man more awfully than during the
first half hour that he is alone with a woman whom he has married but
never genuinely loved.

Death's daughter did not spare Theobald. He had behaved very well
hitherto. When Christina had offered to let him go, he had stuck to his
post with a magnanimity on which he had plumed himself ever since. From
that time forward he had said to himself: "I, at any rate, am the very
soul of honour; I am not," etc., etc. True, at the moment of magnanimity
the actual cash payment, so to speak, was still distant; when his father
gave formal consent to his marriage things began to look more serious;
when the college living had fallen vacant and been accepted they looked
more serious still; but when Christina actually named the day, then
Theobald's heart fainted within him.

The engagement had gone on so long that he had got into a groove, and the
prospect of change was disconcerting. Christina and he had got on, he
thought to himself, very nicely for a great number of years; why--why--why
should they not continue to go on as they were doing now for the res