, who played the game as if the presidency depended upon "following
lead," and each trump was a diamond of inestimable worth, to be cherished
and reserved, and parted with only at the last extremity. Sometimes a
thought of comparison would arise, as he sat with elevated feet beside the
anthracite fire, and gazed steadfastly on his patent leathers. Sometimes
the idle jests and the heartless laughter would jar upon his ear; and the
cigar was suffered to die out as, in thoughts of wife and child, he forgot
to put it to his lips. But the injustice of his conduct, in thus depriving
them of his society, did not once cross his mind, until he was
involuntarily made the witness of a visit between Catherine and a lady who
had been her intimate friend before marriage.

He had returned hurriedly one morning in search of some papers left in his
own room, dignified by the name of study, though it must be confessed that
he passed but little time there. It communicated with Catherine's
apartment, which was just then occupied by the two ladies in confidential
chat.

"And so you won't go to Mrs Sawyer's to-night?" said Miss Lyons, who had
thrown herself at full length upon a couch, and was idly teazing the baby
with the tassel of her muff. "How provoking you are! You might as well be
dead as married! It's well for your husband that I'm not in your place.
Why, every one's talking about it, my child, how you are cooped up here,
and Willis at the club-house night after night. Morgan told me he was
always there, and asked me what kind of a wife he had--whether you
quarreled or flirted, that he was away from you so much."

Had the heedless speaker glanced up from her play with little Gertrude, she
would have seen her friend's face suffused with a slight flush, for the
last was a view of the case entirely new to her. But she said, quietly as
ever--

"'Everybody' might be in better business, Nell; and why is it well for
Willis that you are not in my place?"

"Why? Because I'd pay him in his own coin; he should not have the game all
in his own hands. If he went to the club, I'd flirt, that's all, and we'd
see who would hold out the longer."

"Bad principle, Nelly. 'Two wrongs,' as the old proverb says, 'never make a
right;' and yet I am sorry I said that, for so long as it gives Willis
pleasure, and he is not drawn from his business by it, it is no wrong,
though there is danger to any man in confirmed habits of 'good-fellowship,'
as it is