Paul too, who, in spite of all evidence, persisted in asserting and believing that Barbara's property would have saved him, was almost savage in his ill-temper. Ostentatiously economical, but requiring the same comforts and attendance he had enjoyed with more than double their present income, nothing but devoted affection and a reliance in his innate good qualities could have preserved his wife's last comfort, a reliance on him, a respect for her husband. The wife who ceases to look up is indeed alone and miserable. In the pettish recklessness of his grief, he had chosen to make a parade of giving up every thing; not an indignity was spared his family; and many comforts they might have honorably retained, were cast from them, that Barbara might more fully feel the enormity of her fault. The children could but half understand the change; and their innocent murmurs, their cowed looks, their gentle pity for "poor mamma" were so many daggers to her heart. Paul Chepstowe's credit was so good that he might have recommenced life; he was offered a capital on the security of his wife's fortune; but he scorned a boon emanating from that source, and preferred taking a subordinate clerkship in a mercantile house. Some people have a pleasure in "cutting off the nose to spite the face," and our hero was of that class. Like Mawworm, "he liked to be despised;" for some time it literally did his heart good to come home and say he had been treated with supercilious pride and incivility, and thus maunder over his troubles. He was almost sorry to find that home still neat and comfortable, to see his children flourishing in mind and body, to feel that some of their old connections yet considered his wife their equal. Time and the hour, however, will wear through the longest day; and Paul gradually accustomed himself to his happiness, and to look upon himself once more as a respectable member of society.