"I must try for it. Things have got to that pass now, that----Do you know what happened to me just as I went out after lunch? Gladwish, the shoemaker, sent to threaten me with arrest! I shall be walked off to prison, I suppose, for a few wretched pairs of abominable shoes. The fellow has no more notion of fitting my foot than a farrier." "To prison! Oh, Ancram! But Gladwish's bill cannot be so very large----" "Of course it's not 'so very large!'" "Then, if we paid it, or even part of it----" "Paid it! Upon my word, Cassy, you are too absurd! 'Paid it!' In the first place, I have only a very few pounds in the house--barely enough to take me to town, I think; and, in the next place, if I paid Gladwish, what would be the result? The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker would be all down on me with summonses, and writs, and executions, and bedevilments of every imaginable kind. But you have no more notion--you take it all so coolly. 'Pay him!' By George! Cassy, it's very hard to stand such nonsense!" Castalia withdrew from the table, and sat down on the little sofa and cried. Her husband looked at her across a glass of very excellent sherry, which he was just about to hold up to the light. "I think, Castalia," he said, "I really do think, that when a man is in such trouble as I am, reduced to the brink of ruin, not knowing which way to turn for a ten-pound note, struggling, striving, bothering his brains to find a way out of the confounded mess, he might expect something more cheering and encouraging from his wife than perpetual snivelling." With that he cracked a filbert with a sharp jerk of indignation. But Algernon's forte was not the minatory or impressively wrathful style of eloquence. He could hurl a sarcasm, sharp, light, and polished; but when he came to wielding such a ponderous weapon as serious reproof on moral considerations, he was apt to make a poor hand of it. It was excessively disagreeable, too, to see that woman's thin shoulders moving convulsively under her gay-coloured dress, as she sobbed with her head buried in the sofa cushions. That really must be put a stop to. So, as it appeared evident that scolding would not quench the tears, he tried coaxing. The coaxing was not so efficacious as it would have been once. Still, Castalia responded to it to the extent of endeavouring to check the sobs which still shook her frail chest and throat. "When shall you be back, Ancram?" she said, looking beseechingly at him. He answered that he hoped to be in Whitford again on Tuesday night, or Wednesday at the latest (it was then Monday), and he particularly impressed on her the necessity of telling any one who might inquire the cause of his absence, that he had been suddenly called up to town by the illness of Lord Seely. He had, in fact, said a word or two to that effect when, on his way home, he had ordered the fly, which was to carry him and his valise to the coach-office. Castalia insisted on accompanying him to the