“I’m afraid I _must_ decline,” was the reply, “for my wife has been at home by herself all day, and it is not fair to expect her to spend the evening in solitude also. But you need not be victimised on that account; come home and dine with us. You’ve never met my wife; she was in the school-room and a pinafore when you went abroad with your regiment. Say yes, and then you can tell old Broomfield that you are engaged to me.” “So be it then,” was the rejoinder, and thus was Mr. Broomfield cheated of his guests, and Harry enabled to avoid a _tête-à-tête_ dinner, and possibly a scene, with his outraged spouse. In the meantime, Alice had been enduring all the mental torments consequent upon having been angry with the person one loves best in the world. First, the idea that she had been most cruelly used, and extensively sinned against, and put upon, was the only one which presented itself to her mind in anything like a clear and definite shape; and she bewailed her evil fortune in a very thunderstorm of weeping. Having by this means condensed, and disposed of, a vast amount of superfluous steam, she grew calmer and more reasonable, when the uncomfortable possibility gradually dawned upon her, that she also might have been to blame--that she had first irritated, and then defied Harry, and utterly and completely failed in her duty as a wife; and so penitent did she become on the strength of this conviction, that if her husband had returned at that moment, she would have thrown herself at his feet and humbly implored his pardon, which act of unqualified submission must have disarmed Harry so entirely and totally, that he would instantly have forgiven her, and frankly confessed himself to blame, and Alice would never again have experienced the effects of his “quiet manner.” But, unfortunately, Harry was at that moment differently occupied, in impressing upon Tom Rattleworth the important fact, that Lucifer would be all the better for having a red-hot iron passed lightly over his off fetlock at the first convenient opportunity, and thus Alice’s extreme penitence evaporated as her anger had done. The final conclusion at which she arrived was, that she would confess her fault to Harry on his return, and then try calmly and quietly to convince him of his injustice. If she should succeed in this, of which she did not feel by any means certain, they would exchange forgiveness; and, warned by that which had occurred, take heed to their ways, and live in harmony and affection ever after. All these sentiments Alice proposed to deliver when she and her husband should be _tête-à-tête_ after dinner, at which time she had observed Harry to be usually in an amiable and convincible frame of mind. It may easily be imagined, therefore, that when she heard Tom Rattleworth declare with much enthusiasm, and in a voice raised to the pitch in which its possessor had been wont to direct the gallant fraction of the British