Kindness and affection are never so much prized as when we have suffered injustice at the hands of one we love. Words cannot console at such a moment: but sympathy--the conviction that another heart feels for and with us, is able in some degree to do so. Whatever faults Arabella Crofton might possess,--and that they were neither few nor light no one was better aware than Harry Coverdale,--the truth and strength of her regard for him he did not doubt. Deeply, fondly, earnestly as he loved his wife, he must have been more than mortal had he not perforce contrasted the levity (to use the mildest term) and unkindness of her on whom he thus lavished his whole treasure of affection, with the ready sympathy, the watchful tenderness of one who, if she had been all evil, nay, if she had not possessed in some degree unusual generosity of character, might have hated him with a strength proportioned to the regard she now appeared to feel towards him. Men are constitutionally denied the relief which the gentler sex derive from tears; but if, when a woman would weep, a man of deep, strong feeling can be sufficiently softened to give vent to his sorrow in words, the effect is somewhat analogous. Harry’s heart was full to overflowing, and Arabella’s well-timed sympathy caused the torrent of his grief to burst forth. “Why does she try me thus!” he said; “it is, it _must_ be, mere want of thought; she _is_ wilful, I see it, as clearly as I see and know that it was my culpable neglect which first made her so; but this is a hard punishment for even so gross a fault! If she knew how her cold looks and hard words pain me--how it grieves, destroys me to be forced to deny her anything--to feel it my duty, as I perceive it to be now, to oppose her slightest wish! And then to see her doing things which may give those who do not know her truth and purity as I do, occasion to slander her--Arabella, it maddens me!” he pressed his hand to his forehead to still its throbbing; but when his companion appeared about to attempt to console him, he resumed, abruptly--“Don’t speak; you cannot defend her--her conduct admits of no defence, and I will not hear her blamed! Neither can you advise me; as far as action goes, my course is clear--I shall take her out of town tomorrow; and as I cannot have it out with that scoundrel D’Almayne, or the weak, ungrateful boy he is ruining, without compromising her, I must postpone the day of reckoning with them--it will come sooner or later, that is all clear enough; but that is not the point”--here words failed him, and covering his eyes with his hand, he relapsed into his former gloomy silence.