a just debt with it. Now, what have you to say
against that to the disparagement of your husband?"

He looked Beth straight in the face as he spoke, as if the nature of
the transaction would be changed by staring her out of countenance,
and she returned his gaze unflinchingly; but not another word would
she say on the subject. There is a sad majority of wives whose
attitude towards their husbands must be one of contemptuous
toleration--toleration of their past depravity and of their present
deceits, whatever form they may take. Such a wife looks upon her
husband as a hopeless incurable, because she knows that he has not the
sense, even if he had the strength of character, to mend his moral
defects. Beth fully realised her husband's turpitude with regard to
the money, and also realised the futility of trying to make him see
his own conduct in the matter in any light not flattering to himself,
and she was deeply pained. She had taken it for granted that Dan would
pay interest on the money, but had not troubled herself to find out if
he were doing so, as she now thought that she ought to have done, for
clearly she should have paid it herself if he did not. True, she never
had any money; but that was no excuse, for there were honest ways of
making money, and make it she would. She was on her way upstairs to
her secret chamber to think the matter out undisturbed when she came
to this determination; and as soon as she had shut herself in, she
sank upon her knees, and vowed to God solemnly to pay back every
farthing, and the interest in full, if she had to work her fingers to
the bone. Curiously enough, it was with her fingers she first thought
of working, not with her brain. She had seen an advertisement in a
daily paper of several depots for the sale of "ladies' work" in London
and other places, and she determined at once to try that method of
making money. Work of all kinds came easily to her, and happily she
still had her two sovereigns, which would be enough to lay in a stock
of materials to begin with. Her pin-money Dan regularly appropriated
as soon as it arrived, with the facetious remark that it would just
pay for her keep; and so far Beth had let him have it without a
murmur, yielding in that as in all else, however much against her own
inclinations, for gentleness, and also with a vague notion of making
up to him in some sort for his own shortcomings, which she could not
help fancying must be as great a trouble to h