the next day as though nothing had happened. Stanbury's visit
to him, if it had done nothing else, had made this impossible. He
determined that he would not go to her room to-night, but would see
her as early as possible in the morning;--and would then talk to her
with all the wisdom of which he was master.

How many husbands have come to the same resolution; and how few of
them have found the words of wisdom to be efficacious!

CHAPTER X.

HARD WORDS.

[Illustration]

It is to be feared that men in general do not regret as they should
do any temporary ill-feeling, or irritating jealousy between husbands
and wives, of which they themselves have been the cause. The author
is not speaking now of actual love-makings, of intrigues and devilish
villany, either perpetrated or imagined; but rather of those passing
gusts of short-lived and unfounded suspicion to which, as to other
accidents, very well-regulated families may occasionally be liable.
When such suspicion rises in the bosom of a wife, some woman
intervening or being believed to intervene between her and the man
who is her own, that woman who has intervened or been supposed to
intervene, will either glory in her position or bewail it bitterly,
according to the circumstances of the case. We will charitably
suppose that, in a great majority of such instances, she will bewail
it. But when such painful jealous doubts annoy the husband, the
man who is in the way will almost always feel himself justified in
extracting a slightly pleasurable sensation from the transaction.
He will say to himself probably, unconsciously indeed, and with
no formed words, that the husband is an ass, an ass if he be in
a twitter either for that which he has kept or for that which he
has been unable to keep, that the lady has shewn a good deal of
appreciation, and that he himself is--is--is--quite a Captain bold
of Halifax. All the while he will not have the slightest intention
of wronging the husband's honour, and will have received no greater
favour from the intimacy accorded to him than the privilege of
running on one day to Marshall and Snellgrove's, the haberdashers,
and on another to Handcocks', the jewellers. If he be allowed to buy
a present or two, or to pay a few shillings here or there, he has
achieved much. Terrible things now and again do occur, even here in
England; but women, with us, are slow to burn their household gods.
It happens, however, occasionally, as we