on's
wife loved to see him indulge. If for nothing else than it was the
reverse of the sardonic and bitter raillery he often practised,--a
spirit of scoff in which he inveighed against the world and himself,--it
possessed for her an indescribable charm. It represented her husband,
besides, in what she loved to think his true character,--that of a
noble, enthusiastic man, eagerly bent upon benefiting his fellows. To
her thinking, there was nothing of vanity,--no overweening conceit
in all these foreshadowings of future fame; nay, if anything, he
understated the claims he would establish upon the world's gratitude.

With what eager delight, then, did she listen! how enchanting were the
rich tones of his voice as he thus declaimed!

"How it cheers my heart, Herbert, when I hear you speak thus! how bright
everything looks when you throw such sunlight around you!"

"'Is this the debauchee,--is this the fellow we have been reading of in
the reports from Scotland Yard? 'methinks I hear them whispering
to each other. Ay, and that haughty University, ashamed of its old
injustice, will stoop to share the lustre of the man it once expelled."

"Oh, think of the other and the better part of your triumph!" cried she,
eagerly.

"The best part of all will be the vengeance on those who have wronged
me. What will these calumniators say when it is a nation does homage to
my success?"

"There are higher and better rewards than such feelings," said she, half
reproachfully.

"How little you know of it!" said he, in his tone of accustomed
bitterness. "The really high and great rewards of England are given to
wealth, to political intrigue, to legal success. It's your banker, your
orator, or your scheming barrister, who win the great prizes in our
State Lottery. Find out some secret by which life can be restored to the
drowned, convert an atmosphere of pestilence into an air of health and
vigor, discover how an avalanche may be arrested in its fall, and, if
you be an Englishman, you can do nothing better with your knowledge
than sell it to a company, and make it marketable through shareholders.
Philanthropy can be quoted on 'Change like a Welsh tin-mine or a
patent fuel company; and if you could raise the dead, make a 'limited
liability' scheme of it before you tell the world your secret."

"Oh, Herbert, it was not thus you were wont to speak."

"No, Grace," said he, in a tone of gentle, sorrowful meaning; "but there
is no such misan