I can't do it-I can't work hysterics anyhow! I never could since I grew up. I might manage to scream once, if that would oblige you, but I know it would scare the people next door! Now, don't rant and rave like Wilson Barrett when he's got his red Chatterton wig on, but be calm and sensible, and tell us what's the matter."

She spoke like a friendly young man, and I peered at her doubtfully.

"Honoria," I began, then my feelings got the better of me again, and I muttered-"No, no! it is too much! I will NOT-I cannot be calm!"

"Then go to bed," she said soothingly, laying one hand on my shoulder, and looking quite benignantly at me, in spite of my endeavour to bestow upon her a lordly scowl. "Something's upset you; your liver's wrong -that I can see in the twinkling of an eye. I haven't studied medicine for nothing! You should have taken a cooling draught and gone to bye-bye" (gone to byebye! Silly minx! did she take me for a baby!) "hours ago. Why did you sit up for me?"

I fixed my reproachful gaze upon her, solemnly, penetratingly, and-quailed! She looked so handsome, especially now that she had thrown away the end of that horrible cigar. She had such a commanding presence, that clinging grey velvet gown became her so admirably, and round her full white throat she wore the

diamond pendant I had given her on our wedding-day -a pendant containing a miniature portrait of myself. My portrait! She wore it-she, this stately, beautiful young woman wore my miserable physiognomy on her bosom! My wrath melted into sudden maudlin sentiment.

"Honoria," I said feebly, slipping my arm round her waist-"oh, Honoria! if you only loved me!"

She bent her head towards mine, lower and lower till her lips almost touched my ear.

"Look here, old boy," she then whispered confidentially, "you may as well make a clean breast of it! Have you-have you been at that brandy I left out on the sideboard?"

CHAPTER IV.

It will now, I think, be readily understood that Honoria was a difficult woman to argue with. There was no imaginativeness about her, no romance, no sentiment. If a man gave way to his feelings (as I did on the occasion just related), she set his natural emotion down either to indigestion or insobriety. The "tide of passion"-the "overflowing of the human heart," and all that sort of thing-belonged, she considered, to the "stuff and rubbish" books written by Scott, Thackeray and Dickens, or, worse still, suggested poetry. And if there was anything in the world Honoria positively hated, it was poetry. She didn't mind the "Ingoldsby Legends" or the "Biglow Papers," but poetry, real poetry, was her favourite abomination. She always went to sleep over a play of Shakespeare's. The only time I ever saw her laugh at any performance of the kind was during Irving's representation of "Macbeth." Then she was in silent convulsions of mirth. Whenever the celebrated Henry gasped a gasp, or wriggled a wriggle, she seemed to be seized with spasms. But the play itself didn't move her one iota; she dozed off comfortably in the carriage going home, and waking up

suddenly just as we reached our own door, she demanded:

"I say, Willie, what became of the old man who went to stop with Irving in his cardboard castle? Never saw him again! Wasn't it funny? Must have left out a bit of the play by mistake!"

I realized then that she had never comprehended the leading motif of the sublime tragedy—namely, the murder of King Duncan-and with anxious care and laboured precision I explained it to her as best I could. She listened amiably enough, and when I had finished, yawned capaciously.

"Good gracious! So that was what it was all about! Well, it didn't seem clear to me! I thought Irving had stuck the blue man-the old blue thing with a patch over his eye that came up through a trap door at dinnertime." (She meant Banquo's ghost!) "He was funny -awfully funny! He was just the colour of a damp lucifer match-you know, one of those things that won't strike, but only fizzle and smell! Anyhow it was a muddle, couldn't tell who was killed and who wasn't. Lovely last sprawl that of Irving-looked as if he were coming out of his skin! He was done for he was killed in the play, wasn't he?"

"He was," I assented gravely.

"That's all right! Hope he ate a good supper afterwards! Must make a man peckish to work about a big

sword like that-all for nothing too! Poking at the air -just fancy! Dreadfully exhausting!"

And off she went to bed with no more notion of the grandeur and terror and pathos of Shakespeare's most awe-inspiring production than if she had been a woman of wood! So I knew she had no sentiment in her, and of course I was a fool to expect any sympathy from her in my hours of irritation or despondency. And those hours were getting pretty frequent, but for various reasons I held my peace and made no further complaints. I would wait, I resolved, and patiently watch the course of events.

Events progressed onward as they are prone to do, and my wife continued her independently masculine mode of living without any fresh remonstrances from me just then. The time I had anticipated came at last, and a boy was born to us; a remarkably fine child(yes, I know! the most weazened infant, if it be the first-born, is always "remarkably fine" in the opinion of its parents; but this one was not a humbug-he was really and truly a good specimen), and with his birth I became happy and hopeful. Surely now, I thought, with a swelling heart-now my Honoria will realize her true position, and will grow ashamed of those "mannish" habits, which rob a woman of the refined grace and sweetness that should attach to the dignity of motherhood. My spirits rose. I pictured my wife as a different