Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 May 1895 — Silence [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Silence

By Miss Mulock

■'" CHAPTER XIII —Continued. "That's baby! What a bother she is! Qonld Janet go to her?’ “I will," said Silence, and vanished from the room. “That wife of yours is the very kindest jef women, Rody; but I hope she will not overfatigue herself,’’ remarked Bella, politely, though making no effort to prevent the fatigue. She always had a trick of never doing for herself what another was willing to do for her. And as she sat in the arm-chair, her feet on the fender, she looked the very picture of luxurious ease, except for the haggard, restless look so sad to see. “I must leave you,” Roderick said. “You know, Bella, I am a working man now, and get my own living.” “Yes, she told me. It must be very disagreeable.” “On the contrary, I rather like it. Daily bread, honestly earned, is far sweeter than the old idleness. “Is it? Then I wish I could earn mine.” “You have no need, having your own Independent fortune.” “Yes; he can’t get it, mercifully; mamma tied it up too safe. But neither can I unless she choose. She will do nothing for me unless I stay with my husband like a respectable woman,' as she says. I doubt if she will ever forgive my running away—even to ray own brother.” “Who, I suppose, is not respectable,” said Roderick, bitterly. “Nevertheless, She must be told. Shall I telegraph to her for you this morning?" He spoke firmly, having already made up his mind to this; but he was not prepared for the agony of terror and misery which came over the unfortunate wife.

“Tell her, and she'll tell my husband, and he will come and fetch me. Not that he cares for me —not a pin; but only for the sake of appearances. Oh, Rody, don't tell anybody. Keep me safe —hide me. If you only knew what I have suffered!” “My j>oar Bell, my Heather Bell," said he, tenderly, using the old pet name he had invented for her in the days when they played together “among the broom." At that she quite broke down. “Oh, I wish I were a girl again. I wish —I wish I had never married. Somebody once said to me that a woman has always a future until she is married, then she has none. Tied and bound —tied and bound forever. And I am but seven-and-twenty.” That look, half appeal, half despair, it jrent to Roderick's heart, for he knew it was only too true. She was “tied and bound" with the chains she had herself riveted. Even her own brother, however he pitied her, was powerless to set her free. “Oniy seven-and-twenty,” she repeated. “Such a long life before me —how am I to bear it? ‘Till death do us part.’ And I can’t die. And he —he won't die; these sort of people never do.” “Hush!” said Roderick, turning away aghast. “You don’t know what you are saying.” “I do know it only too well. Many a time, when, after raving like a madman, he has sunk to a mere drunken dog, and

lain asleep on his bed like a log of wood, I have thought of Jael and Sisera, or Judith and Holofernes, and others of those holy murderesses. If it would only please God to take him, as our minister saysl He would be much better in heaven. He couldn't get any drink there.” This ghastly mixture of the horrible and ludicrous, added to what he knew of the utter recklessness of Bella’s nature when roused, was almost too much for Roderick to bear. He looked instinctively round for the one who was always at hand, helping him to bear everything; but Silence was still absent upstairs. Then, laying a firm hand on the poor, violent woman, at once violent and weak —it is so often thus—he placed her back in the chair. “You are talking nonsense, Bella; you know you are; the most arrant nonsense, or worse. Don’t be afraid; you have a brother still, who will do his best to take care of you; but you must let me do it in the right way. Nothing cowardly, nothing underhand. Your mother, at least, must be told where you are. My wife says so. She and I were talking it over this morning.” “Very kind.” “It was kind and wise, too,” was the grave reply. “Silence is the wisest woman I know.” “And I the most foolish! It looks like it. Very well. Cast me off if you like. Turn me out-of-doors. I’ll take the child and go.” But it was only a Hysterical impulse which ended in a flood of hysterical tears. Utterly bewildered and perplexed, Roderick went to the foot of the stairs and called “Silence” in the sharpest tones he had used since his marriage. “Why do you leave me? You know I can’t do without you,” he said. Then added, as she descended with the wailing child in her arms, “it is hard for you, too, my wife. Our peaceful days are all done."

“Not quite,” she said, smiling—it was wonderful the sweetness of her smile whenever she had that baby in her arms—“l see,” when she perceived Bella, and heard her frantic sobbing. “My friend” the loving mon ami which she still used sometimes), “you are of no use here. Leave her to me—women understand women. She will be all right soon. Take your hat and go. Outside work is quite hard enough for you. Good-by, my dear-est-dearest!” She lifted up her face to be kissed—the pale, firm, peaceful face, such a contrast to the other one—opened the door, shut It after him, and watched him safe away. Then, with a great sigh of relief, she went back to her unfortunate sister-in-law. CHAPTER XIV. When Roderick came home at night, not without a certain masculine appreheneiveness of domestic worry plainly written on his face, he found the household settled into surprising peace. In the first place, baby was not crying, but asleep, Janet’s young sister being installed as temporary nurse-maid, and a very clever one; and baby’s mother, her grand silk dress replaced by a soft woolen one of Silence’s —the two women were nearly the same height—sat by the parlor fire. Idle, certainly—Roderick remembered how Bella would sit for an hour “toasting her toes,” with her hands before her—but apparently quiet and content. He wont up and kissed her with brotherly affection, saying something about his pleasure in having her in his house. “Then you’ll not send me back to mine? You did not telegraph to mamma as you HM you would T'

“No.” “Nor write?’ “How could I write to my mother?’ said Roderick, with a mixture of pride and sadness. “No; whatever is done, you must do it, not I. We will talk of it after dinner.” For he saw that Silence had given herself the unwonted trouble of a late dinner, just to make Bella feel things “more like her own ways." It was a little matter, but it touched the young husband's heart. While he sat talking to his sister his eyes were perpetually following the flitting figure of one who never sat still —never knew what idleness was till she had done everything for everybody. “That wife of yours makes me so comfortable,” said Bella, benignly. “And she is so clever, so inventive, really quite a treasure in a small household. In mine, now, I never could do anything myself as she does. It must be very pleasant.” “Only, perhaps, very fatiguing. My wife, come here and rest, just for five minutes.” And as he kissed the tired face he felt sure that the “comfort” which Bella so enjoyed had cost Silence something. Dinner passed, and the half hour afterward, during which Roderick tried hard to admire his new niece, and to make things as easy and cheerful as possible with his sister. When Silence—always Silence—had put baby to bed, the three gathered round the coxy fire, listening to the howl of the wind and the patter of the rain outside, which only made most peaceful the deep peace within. “What a quiet, pleasant life you must have here, you two!” said Bella, with a •igh. They looked at one another and smiled. “And are yon so very poor? What do yon live upon?” “First, there is Blackball. Then, my wife has her income which cousin Silence left her, and I earn mine. We put the two together—marriage should be a fair partnership.” “But it is not,” broke in Bella: “it is mere slavery, unbearable slavery. Oh, that mine was ended! Oh, that I were free!” Roderick took a hand of his wife and sister. “Let us have a little talk together, and face our position, which is not an easy one. Bella, what do you mean to do?” “I don’t know.” “Then what do you wish me to do?” “I haven't the slightest idea. But, oh, Rody, why bother me, when I am so comfortable?” Just the old Bella—easy, pleasure-loving —dwelling only in the present moment, acting entirely on her impulses, of which both the good and the bad ones were equally transitory. There are many such women, who please a great many men—as she had done; who generally find some one or other to bear their burdens for them, and go through life, as she expressed it, quite “comfortably.” But as Roderick looked from one to the other of the two beside him, he thought—no, he loyally refused to think—but he instinctively clasped his wife’s hand tighter in his own. Small as it* was, and tender, that was the hand for a man to cling to, ay, and lean on—as,soon or late,men must lean on women when trouble comes. “Bella," he said, earnestly, “do you at all understand ”

“I understand that I am henceforth what is called a ‘grass widow,’ ” interrupted she, with a reckless laugh. “Mamma must keep me, or give me my money, and let me keep myself: My husband will never give me a half-penny. And Silence says I ought not to ask him. She has the very oddest notions, that wife of yours.” Roderick pressed the hand he held. “Have you two been talking together?” “A little.” “And you have told her everything?” “Everything—made a clean breast of It. A pretty story, isn’t it. Silence? But it’s at an end now,thank God,” said Bella, setting her teeth together. “Even a worui will turn at last.” “Shall you not go back to your husband? —that is, if he will take you back V” “Trust him for—that. He knows on which side his brenffris buttered; all the Thomsons do. They were glad enough to catch me, a bright, clever, pretty girlyes, I was both clever and pretty once, my dear—to be a sort of caretaker or keeper over him; he needs a keeper when he is drunk. .And a wife is the best sort of one—saves appearances. Thomsons as well as Jardines would do anything in the world to save appearances.”

Roderick made no answer. He knew it was true. The sight of his sister had brought back the memory of many a boyish struggle, quixotic as vain, against the predominant spirit of the family—a family in which the first question that arose was never “Is it right?” or “Is it wrong?” but only “Is it expedient?” This law of expediency, not righteous prudence, but petty, worldly wisdom, had been at the root of Bella’s marriage. Those who had the making of it, would they not on the same principle do their best to prevent its being unmade? He felt sure his mother would. Anything, everything, she would sacrifice rather than be “talked about,” as the world would talk, if there w r as a public separation between Mr. and Mrs. Thomsontwo people who, in their own opinion and that of their respective families, held such a very important place in society. He knew his mother and the rest would view the catastrophe, as they had viewed the marriage which resulted in it, solely from the standpoint of society. No higher law that what the world would think and say ever actuated or guided them. In old times he had dimly guessed this—secondarily and chiefly by its effect on his silent, patient father; but now, when he himself came to man’s estate, and viewed things with his own eyes, he saw it clearly. Still, this affair was, as all such cases are, most complicated and difficult; and in it Roderick’s own position was not the least painful. To act a brother’s part toward his poor sister he did not shrink from; but to aid and abet a runaway wife in concealing herself from her husband was most galling, not only to his pride, but to his sense of honor. Yet to thrust her from him into hopeless misery was worse than cruel, dangerous, knowing her temperament, which was to escape from present pain as foolishly as a child does, at any future risk and cost. The medium course, to come boldly forward and insist upon the separation she desired, was equally difficult and responsible for any brother, being himself a man and a husband.

Roderick looked at his own wife, growing closer to him every day, in the mutual dependence which so gently and naturally replaces passion, and gives to both that ineffable rest, of unseparated joys, and divided cares. “Bella,” he said, in a moved voice, “do you know, my dear, exactly what you are doing, or wish to do? Remember what your Bible says: ‘What God hath joined let no man put asunder.’ ” “But God did not join us; it was the devil, I think,” she answered, with a bitter laugh. “And if all other help fails, the devil shall help me to get rid of him.” “What do you mean?” “Never mind. Wait till I’m driven desperate. I am nearly already,; If only I could tear off this.” She took hold of her manage ring and made as though she would throw it into the fire. “If at any

price, at any coat, t oonld be Mn Ju» dine again. ana never more set rjm upon that brute. that fool, that " "Hush!" said Silence, “He's baby's father." *'Ah. that’s It—that's thy misery. I don't hate ray child. 1 dki at first, hot : not now. it’s nature. I suppose. Besides, she is my child. all that I have of my ; own; and even that is half hia, If he chooses to claim her. Oh, Rody, what must I do? what can I do?" It was. indeed, a piteous strait. The one false step, marriage, unconsecrated by love, almost as great a sin as love nnconsecrated by marriage, had brought ita own punishment with it. The young pair, to whom those things appeared as a ghastly nightmare, scarcely comprehensible as a daylight reality, instinctively drew closer together, while they regarded the hapless woman, who had, as she truly said, no future. A loathing wife, an unthankful mother, what future could she have, either in herself or in “the world.” for which she had sacrificed so much and gained so little? What could she do? As she put the question her despairing eyes supplied the answer. Nothing! “I know very little about these things," said Roderick, sadly; "but I believe there are two ways of parting man and wife—by divorce, enabling both to marry again, and by judicial separation. But, oh! the pain, the scandal of it! Think of your child; think, too, of your mother!" While using this argument he knew its futility. Whether from disposition or circumstances. Bella had always been that rather rare character among women —a woman who thinks only of herself. With a perplexed longing for help, for counsel, her brother turned to the other woman beside him. “What does my wife say?" “1 don't care what she. says—wlmt anybody says.” cried Bella, violently. “I have no love for him; I never had. It is a simple question of money. If I run away, how am I to keep myself and the child? She says—that voice of wisdom there — that if I leave him I ought not to accept a half-penny from him. Very well; get mamma to maintain me, or else I’ll maintain myself." “How?” “I don’t know or care. It may not be for long. He will drink himself to death one of these days.” Roderick turned away in horror, but Silence laid a firm, stern hand on her sis-ter-in-law’s arm. “One word more such as that, and we will neither of us help you.” Bella shrunk into submission, even a little shame, then burst into piteous entreaties.

“Oh, Rody, do not be hard upon me! I have nobody in the world to come to but you. How am I to get rid of my husband? Not harming him—l’ll not harm him—only let me escape from him. I will do it, and I’m right; your wife says so.” Roderick started. “Yes, she is quite right,” said Silence, not lifting her eyes, but speaking as her husband knew she could speak sometimes, with unmistakable decision. “My wife is a daring woman to say such a thing.” “Am I?” She looked up a minute with a quivering lip, and did not attempt to put back her hand, which he had let go, but folded her fingers together, after a way she had, as if to give herself strength, when she had any difficult or painful thing to do. “This is a very strange advice for my wife—l hope a happy wife—to give to my sister. Your reasons?” “They are not easy to explain, but I will try.” She stopped, then with a firm, clear voice went on again. “If Bella had only herself to sacrifice she might do it, though lam not sure. It is a sin against heaven to condone sin, even in one’s own husband. But in this and similar cases a woman does not sacrifice herself alone. There are others upon whom the sins of the father may descend, generation after generation. She must think of them. She is responsible to God for them. If I were in Bella’s place”—her voice sunk almost to a whisper; she turned deadly pale and then flushed crimson all over her sac I were in your sister’s place I would die rather than be mother to a drunkard’s children.” There was a total silence. Bella, accustomed to make self the standpoint of all her opinions and acts, perhaps could scarcely understand; but Roderick did. Startled he might be, yet there was something in his wife’s stern righteousness which he could not gainsay. As he looked on that small, sweet face, so sweet, yet so strong, he saw in her for the first time not’merel.v his wife, but the woman, the cojoint and yet separate existence, intrusted by God and nature with far more than her own petty life, inheriting—and conscious that she inherited—the destiny which came to her from sacred Eve, “mother of all living.” Man as he was, with a man’s natural leaning to the masculine side, with a man’s natural blindness to much that women see by instinct, still his wife’s words smote him with a certain respect, even awe. That she had strength to say them at all, she so timid, so shy, so reticent, proved how deeply she must have thought and felt on the matter. “Dear,” he said, holding out his hand, “if all women were like you—especially if all sons had mothers like you—there would be fewer bad men in this world.” She answered nothing; but her whole face brightened in recognition of what is to women like her as sweet as being loved —honored. And so, without more arguments, all three seemed tacitly to accept the position which poor Bella had so fiercely insisted upon—that for her, married life, or rather that unholy travesty of marriage which had been her self-in-flicted doom, was over and done forever. “Let her live as a widow,” Silence said. “Her life is lost—l know that—but let the sacrifice end here. Let ’her not submit to be the ruin of some other lives."

“But she may be the ruin of her husband’s whom she took ‘for better, for worse,’ How do you answer that?” Silence shrunk back, full of pain. “Oh, it is difficult, so difficult, to see the right: worse, perhaps, to do it. Still, still— No,” and again the strong, clear Abdiel look came into her eyes—“no, there can he but one right and but one wrong alike for men and for women. She must leave him. Think, Roderick, if the case was reversed, if you, or any other husband, were expected to keep as mistress of your house, as mother of your children, a drunken woman.” “God forbid!” “Then men ought to forbid it, too. Drunkenness, dissoluteness, anything by which a man degrades himself and destroys his children, gives his wife the right to save them and herself from him, to cut adrift, like a burning ship, and be free. Poverty, contumely, loneliness—let her endure all. Pity her lot, if you will, but to ignore it, to accept it, and submit to it, above ail, to let the innocent suffer from it—never! Bella tells me that the law gives her possession of her child for seven years. My advice is let her take it in her arms and fly—anywhere, so that her husband cannot get her back, or make the'law follow her. Nay, if I were she, I would defy the law; I would hide myself at the world’s end, change my name, earn my bread as a common working woman, but I would save my child and go.” As Silence stood, holding close to her breast the poor babe—she had fetched it, and was walking up and down the room with it, for no one else seemed to have, patience with the miserable, sickly, wailing creature —she looked the very incarnation of womanhood in its highest form—motherhood; absolutely calm, absolutely fearless, as mothers ought to be. Roderick, touched with many new thoughts which come crowding to a man when he has ceased to be merely a young man, absorbed in himself alone,and begun to look into the far future, the future of those who may yet bless or curse him for his part therein—Roderick caught her arm as she passed and drew her to his Side. “Perhaps you are right—l do not quite know. We must take time to think. But just at this moment you must give baby to its own mother and come and sit down by me. ’Remember, you are mine.” “Yes.” She obeyed, apparently without a thought of disobeying, for the authority was that of lore, and the voice, though decisive, was thrilled with unspeakable tenderness. “Mine!” Ah, she acknowledged the possession—the subjection. You could see by her look that she would have served him like a slave; but only him, her just and righteous lord. Never for one moment would she have submitted to unrighteousness or to tyranny. “What a fierce little woman this is!” he whispered, with a smile. “I never could have believed it of her!” “Oh, forgive me! It is because lam so happy—so happy! that I can understand what it must be to be miserable.” But Bella’s misery, however deeply it had moved her sister-in-law, did.not seem to have overwhelmed herself. She began talking ovef all her affairs, volubly and freely; silent endurance was not her gift. Once having got her brother to agree with her in the opinion which, at any rate, she held to-day, though it might change tomorrow, she became quite cheerful, and

planned her future life as a “widow bewitched” with an eagerness that a little astonished Silence. “If mamma would only give me some money, I could spend the summer in Switzerland, the winter in Paris. I always wanted to travel abroad for awhile; and to be traveling without him, able to go w bere I liked, and do what I wanted. Ob!”—a sigh of intense relief —“Rody, you must try and persuade mamma to give me plenty of money.” “You forget ”he began, bravely. “Dear me, yes! I had forgotten all about it. But never mind, Rody dear,” in a coaxing tone; “can’t you put your wrongs in your pocket, and write to her for me? You always wrote such capital letters; and she would listen to you when she listened to nobody else. Her only son —worth all her daughters put together—at least she thought so. Come—do it. This morning I objected to her being told where I was, but now I see it must be. You’ll save me the trouble of it by writing to her yourself.” Poor Bella! She was always ready to lay her burdens upon anybody who was willing to bear them. He knew that, and yet when he looked at her, and heard her familiar caressing voice, the good brother felt again like the little boy who had carried his big sister’s parcels, flowers, garden tools, even her doll sometimes, when she got tired of it. “I cannot write to my mother,” he said, with a sad earnestess; “but I will telegraph to her in your name, saying where you are, and that you wish to stay with me—you really do wish it?—till something can be settled between you and your husband—reconciliation or, if it must be, separation.” “Separation—only that; she says so,” cried Bella, always ready (another pecu-liarity-how strangely, cruelly clear they all came out now!) —ready and eager to lay the responsibility of her doings and opinions upon somebody else. “What I say is,” Silence answered, “that if your husband is as bad as you aver, and if you have that hatred to him which you profess to have, there is no righteous course for you but separation. But you must not wander about the world as you propose. Live simply and quietly. Be a real mother and take care of your child. You can never be quite desolate with a child.”

Bella shrugged her shoulders. “You have the most extraordinary ideas! But you are a good woman—a very good woman. I shall tell mamma so. It shall not be the worse for you to have been kind to me, my dear,” she added, with a certain touch of feeling, and then plunged back into her own affairs, which absorbed her so entirely, and which she expected every one else to be absorbed in too. Far into the night they talked, for Mrs. Alexander Thomson, who never rose early, was accustomed to sit up late; and, besides, she seemed to take a certain satisfaction in discussing her misfortunes. It was like a person with an ugly wound, or a remarkably severe illness, who at last comes even to take a sort of pride in the same. The self-respect, the reticence, the silence of a broken heart, was not hers at all, though unquestionably she had been a cruelly wronged woman. Taking advantage of her folly, worldliness, and love of wealth and position, her husband’s family had married him to her, just to shift from themselves the burden of him—a man who, as she truly said, “wanted a keeper” rather than a wife. She had walked into the snare, open-eyed, but it had been a snare nevertheless; and Roderick, as he heard her revelations, felt his blood boil with righteous indignation, that instinctive chivalry in defense of the injured and weak, which if every strong man felt as he olight to feel there would be no need for feeble women to vex the world with clamors about their rights or their wrongs. The truly noble of either sex never care to put forward either the one or the other. While Bella talked, Roderick aud his wife were almost entirely silent; and when, afterward, day after day passed by, and no answer came to the telegram, or a second, which, weary of waiting, she sent after it, still they made as few comments as possible on what now began seriously to perplex them both. Mrs. Thomson did not seem in the least perplexed. She made herself extremely comfortable, without much regarding the comfort of other people, exacted a great deal of attendance, and amused herself with suggesting many luxuries hitherto unknown at Blackball. “No, there’s no fear of my husband’s coming to fetch me,” she said one day, in answer to a question of Roderick’s. “He is a Richerden man all over—hates the country; would never face a Highland pass in winter, and if he came he would run away again. You haven’t big enough rooms or grand enough dinners for him. By-the-by, Blackball is rather a cold house, Silence, and a little gloomy, you’ll allow. You ought to keep up good fires, and I think, if I were you, I would have entirely new curtains and carpets before next winter.”

Silence smiled. It was one of those numerous little remarks which she had already learned quietly to smile at without showing offense, even if she felt any. As days sped on, the constant presence of an idle woman in a busy house, had, to say the least, its difficulties. The master did not feel them —his wife took care of that —but the mistress did. Many a time would Roderick notice how tired she looked, and why was it so? Had she not Bella to help her? —women were always company for one another at home, while the men were away. His wife’s only answer was that silent smile. The fact that her guest was his sister tied her tongue, even with her own husband. “It is not for very long,” she said every morning to herself, and went through the day’s work as well as she copld. At night she would often creep away, leaving the brother and sister together, and mount to the attic (which Bella had insisted should be made into a nursery, “because there one can’t hear the little wretch crying”), io sit with the child in her lap—the ugly, elfish, troublesome child, doomed to disease and weakness from its cradle—and wonder with an agony of pity how it would fight through life, or whether, after all, God’s mercy might not be best shown by taking it back again out of a world where nobody wanted it, and into which it had never asked to be born. A great mystery, which none can solve. She and Bella were always friendly, even affectionate, in a sort of way; but nevertheless she often felt weary, so weary; like a person who had to speak all day long in a foreign tongue. At least such was the moral effect of her sister’s companionship. The two women might have been brought up in two hemispheres. Their views of life were so altogether different that they could not understand one another’s language at all. Still, this must be borne; and it was borne. Things might have been a great deal worse. Only when she heard her husband’s restless call for her all over the house, and noticed a nervous irritation in him whenever he was left long alone with his sister. Silence began to wish for some sign of their suspense being over. Evidently both husband and mother had discarded the runaway wife, either on her own ac-

count or that of her brother with who® she had taken refuge. > “We row in the same boat now, Rody,” Bella said one morning, when the seventh day’s post had gone by. “I don’t care; do you? Clearly you will have to adopt as waifs and strays both me and the child. I’ll call it after you, ‘lioderica,’ or perhaps ‘Silence,’ ” “No, not Silence,” he answered, hastily. “I beg your pardon, but there can be only one Silence in the world for me,” taking lovingly his wife's hand. “Advise with her, Bella; she will be sure to suggest the wisest and best thing.” But when the sisters-in-law talked things over, which they had full opportunity of doing, for a deep fall of Christmas snow shut them in, and made Blackball impregnable even to more courageous and less luxurious folk than Mr. Alexander Thomson, they came to no satisfactory conclusions. Though strong on the question of her wrongs, and her corresponding rights, Mrs. Thomson seemed to have a very feeble idea of her duties. To any course which involved the slightest trouble, or exertion, or self-denial, she always offered innumerable mild but insurmountable objections. “It’s all very fine to tell me that if I cut my husband adrift, and refuse to live with him, I can’t expect him to maintain me, and must maintain myself; how can I maintain myself? It isn’t genteel for women to work, and it isn’t pleasant, either. Yon talk of independence and all that, and the comfort my child will be to me; but I don’t like children; and I'm sure, Silence, I shall never enjoy being poor. You know”—she glanced round the old-fashioned room, and helped herself with an air of exemplary condescension to the best dish of that meal which had been considered dinner, but which she always called lunch—“you, my dear, who have always been accustomed to that sort of thing, may find it easy, but I should not.” “No,” said Silence, absently. She was thinking, not of herself, but of her husband—of his long, hard-working days spent at the mill, amid surroundings not too pleasant and with the perpetual whir of machinery in his ears: and to sensitive organizations incessant noise is of itself a torment almost indescribable, though unexplainable to those who do not understand this. He did, and felt it, too, yet he never complained. Even now, as Silence watched him come up the brae, with somewhat lagging steps, she knew he would enter with a cheerful face, and when he had “put off the mechanic, and put on the gentieman,” as he said, laughing, one day to Bella, be his own tender self to both of them. For the common notion that a man may justifiably vent all his business worries on his Ivomankind at home did not seem as yet to have occurred to Roderick Jardine. Whatever vexed him out-of-doors, in-doors he was always the kind, pleasant master and husband— always, under all circumstances, the gentleman. “Yes, I like my work,” he answered, when his sister inquired about it, which she rarely did, evidently considering it a topic which had better be ignored. “And I like working. Once, Bella, I was a great idler, and she has cured me of that. If I had ten thousand a year even, I could never could be idle any more. (To be continued.)