"Drooping sweetness, verdant flower Blooming, withering in an hour, Ere thy gentle breast sustain Latest, fiercest, mortal pain, Hear a suppliant! Let me be Partner in thy destiny: That whene'er the fatal cloud Must thy radiant temples shroud; When deadly damps, impending now, Shall hover round thy destin'd brow, Diffusive may their influence be, And with the blossom blast the tree!" Mr. Wright inclosed these verses complacently enough. Poetry in his eyes was an elegant accomplishment vaguely connected with scholarship and gentility: and he took pride in possessing a wife who, as he more than once assured his cronies in the parlour of the "Turk's Head" at the end of the street, could sit down and write it by the yard. To please Hetty he read them through, pronounced them very pretty, and folded up the paper, remarking, "I'll send it off to your brother John. He likes this sort of thing, and when he learns 'twas written in your weak state he'll think it wonderful." Of the anguish in the closing lines his eye detected, his ear heard, nothing. Yet it was an anguish which daily touched despair in Hetty's heart. God had laid a curse on her, and would not be placated by the good behaviour on which she had built her hopes. She had borne three children, and not one had He suffered to live for a week. No matter how many she might bear, the same fate stood ready for them. Nor was this all. She saw Him smiting, through these innocent babes, at her husband's love. Little by little she felt it relaxing and sinking through carelessness into neglect: and the whole scheme of her atonement rested on his continuing fondness. She had never loved him, but his love was, if not infinitely precious, of infinite moment to her. She needed it to sustain her and keep her in the right way. She omitted no small attentions which might make home pleasant to him. She kept the house bright (they had moved into Frith Street and lived over the shop), and unweariedly coaxed his appetite with her cookery, in which--and especially in pastry-making--she had a born gift. The fumes of the lead-works at the back often took her own appetite away and depressed her spirits, but she never failed to rouse herself and welcome him with a smile. Also (but this was to please herself) sometimes by a word of advice in the matter of toilet or of clothes, oftener by small secret attentions with the needle, she had gradually reformed his habits of dress until now he might pass for a London tradesman of the superior class, decently attired, well shaven and clean in his person. He resigned himself to these improvements with much good-nature and so passed through his metamorphosis almost without knowing it. She practised small economies too; and he owned (though he set it down to his own industry) that his worldly affairs were more prosperous than ever they had been before his marriage.