tin skin, her happy excitement, her wit and tenderness, and joyous
sprightliness, enveloped Griffith in an atmosphere of delight, and drove
everything out of his head but herself; and with this, if the truth must
be told, the sparkling wines co-operated.

Griffith plied the bottle a little too freely. But Mrs. Gaunt, on this
one occasion, had not the heart to check him. The more he toasted her,
the more uxorious he became, and she could not deny herself even this
joy; but, besides, she had less of the prudent wife in her just then
than of the weak, indulgent mother. Anything rather than check his love:
she was greedy of it.

At last, however, she said to him, "Sweetheart, I shall go to bed; for,
I see, if I stay longer, I shall lead thee into a debauch. Be good now;
drink no more when I am gone. Else I'll say thou lovest thy bottle more
than thy wife."

He promised faithfully. But, when she was gone, modified his pledge by
drinking just one bumper to her health, which bumper let in another;
and, when at last he retired to rest, he was in that state of mental
confusion wherein the limbs appear to have a memory independent of the
mind.

In this condition do some men's hands wind up their watches, the mind
taking no appreciable part in the ceremony.

By some such act of what physicians call "organic memory," Griffith's
feet carried him to the chamber he had slept in a thousand times, and
not into the one Mrs. Rider had taken him to the night before.

The next morning he came down rather late for him, and found himself
treated with a great access of respect by the servants.

His position was no longer doubtful; he was the master of the house.

Mrs. Gaunt followed in due course, and sat at breakfast with him,
looking young and blooming as Hebe, and her eye never off him long.

She had lived temperately, and had not yet passed the age when happiness
can restore a woman's beauty and brightness in a single day.

As for him, he was like a man in a heavenly dream: he floated in the
past and the present: the recent and the future seemed obscure and
distant, and comparatively in a mist.

* * * * *

But that same afternoon, after a most affectionate farewell, and many
promises to return as soon as ever he had discharged his obligations,
Griffith Gaunt started for the "Packhorse," to carry to Mercy Leicester,
alias Vint, the money Catharine Gaunt had saved by self-denial and
economy.

An