of his specious gifts, and singe her youth and innocence in their baleful light. Not a dread of having to notice and recognize the young man as his connection in the chastened arena of county society. As nature had not endowed Mr. Carruthers with a capacity for winning affection, though it was not to be denied that there were qualities in his character which commanded respect, it was fortunate for him that he cared less about the former than the latter. Nevertheless, he would probably have been rendered very uncomfortable, not to say unhappy, had he supposed that his wife. "Mrs. Carruthers of Poynings," as there is reason to suppose he designated her, even in his inmost thoughts, positively did not love him. Such a supposition, however, never had occurred to him, which was fortunate; for Mr. Carruthers was apt to hold by his suppositions as strongly as other people held by their convictions, as, indeed, being _his_, why should he not? and it would have been very difficult to dislodge such a notion. The notion itself would have been, in the first place, untrue, and in the second, dangerous. Mrs. Carruthers of Poynings loved her rather grim and decidedly uninteresting but unimpeachably respectable husband, if not passionately, which was hardly to be expected, very sincerely, and estimated him after the fashion of wives--that is to say, considerably above his deserts. All women like their husbands, except those who notoriously do not, and Mrs. Carruthers was no exception to the rule. She had a much greater sense of justice in her than most women, and she used it practically--applied it to her own case. She knew the fault had been her son's in the great sorrow which had destroyed all the pride and pleasure which her prosperous marriage would otherwise have brought her, and she did not charge it upon her husband, or, except in so far as her unconquerable anxiety and depression caused him annoyance, did she inflict the penalty of it on him. She knew him to be a hard man, and she did not look for softness from, him; but she accepted such advantages as hardness of character possesses, and bore its disadvantages well. "If I were he," she had said to herself, even in the first hours of her anguish of conviction of her boy's unworthiness, and when his stepfather's edict of exclusion was but newly published, "and I had so little knowledge of human nature as he has, if life had never taught me toleration, if Clare were my niece and George his son, would I not have acted as he has done? He is consistent to the justness and the sternness of his character." Thinking thus, Mrs. Carruthers acted on the maxim that to judge others aright we should put ourselves in their position. So she accepted the great trial of her life, and suffered it as quietly and patiently as she could. It would be difficult to define with precision the nature of Mr. Carruthers's sentiments towards George Dallas. The young man