And so it proved in Griffith Gaunt's case. The Rev. William Wentworth published, in the usual recitative, the banns of marriage between Thomas Leicester, of the parish of Marylebone in London, and Mercy Vint, spinster, of this parish: and creation, present ex hypothesi mediævale, but absent in fact, assented, by silence, to the union. So Thomas Leicester wedded Mercy Vint, and took her home to the "Packhorse." It would be well if those who stifle their consciences, and commit crimes, would set up a sort of medico-moral diary, and record their symptoms minutely day by day. Such records might help to clear away some vague, conventional notions. To tell the truth, our hero, and now malefactor (the combination is of high antiquity), enjoyed, for several months, the peace of mind that belongs of right to innocence; and his days passed in a state of smooth complacency. Mercy was a good, wise, and tender wife; she naturally looked up to him after marriage more than she did before: she studied his happiness, as she had never studied her own: she mastered his character, admired his good qualities, discerned his weaknesses, but did not view them as defects; only as little traits to be watched, lest she should give pain to "her master," as she called him. Affection, in her, took a more obsequious form than it could ever assume in Kate Peyton. And yet she had great influence, and softly governed "her master" for his good. She would come into the room and take away the bottle, if he was committing excess; but she had a way of doing it, so like a good but resolute mother, and so unlike a termagant, that he never resisted. Upon the whole, she nursed his mind as, in earlier days, she had nursed his body. And then she made him so comfortable; she observed him minutely to that end. As is the eye of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so Mercy Leicester's dove-like eye was ever watching "her master's" face, to learn the minutest features of his mind. One evening he came in tired, and there was a black fire in the parlour. His countenance fell the sixteenth of an inch. You and I, sir, should never have noticed it. But Mercy did, and, ever after, there was a clear fire when he came in. She noted, too, that he loved to play the viol da gambo; but disliked the trouble of tuning it. So then she tuned it for him. When he came home at night, early or late, he was sure to find a dry pair of shoes on the rug, his six-stringed viol tuned to a hair, a bright fire, and a brighter wife smiling and radiant at his coming, and always neat: for, said she, "Shall I don my bravery for strangers, and not for my Thomas, that is the best of company?" They used to go to church, and come back together, hand in hand like lovers: for the arm was rarely given in those days. And Griffith said to himself every Sunday, "What a comfort to have a Protestant wife." But one day he was off his guard, and called her "Kate, my dear."