felt it so much while they were very poor, while all their schemes and shifts were on a small scale, while his every-day comforts depended on her active management and unfailing forethought. But now, when he had played for a great stake and won it, when a larger career was open before him--a career from which he felt she would shrink, and into which he could never hope to force her--he grew desperately afraid of Harriet. Desperately tired of her also. He was a clever man, but she was cleverer than he. He was a man of strong passions, ungovernable, save by the master-passion, interest. She had but one, love; but it was stronger than all his put together, and told to do their worst, and his shallow nature shrank from the unknown depths of hers. She loved him so entirely that there had never been a question of rule between them; but Routh was a wise man in his way, and he knew in his heart he could rule Harriet only by love, and love which was perfectly genuine and true, should the time ever come in which a distant separation of opinion and will between them should make it necessary for him to try. But he had a clear appreciation of his wife's intellect also, and he knew thoroughly well that he could not deceive her with any counterfeit presentment--the love which should rule her must be real. This was precisely what he had not to produce when required. He had loved her after his fashion for so long that he was rather surprised by his own constancy: but it would have been difficult for Stewart Routh to go on loving any one but himself always, and Harriet was so much superior to him in strength, firmness, and disinterestedness, that her very superiority was an element of destruction for the love of such a man as he.