Lest this digression, into which I have been inadvertently betrayed, should mislead any with the idea that I have some design of dignifying into a hero this respectable, but very commonplace personage, return we to him as he hears eleven o'clock rung out by the monitor on the mantel, and says to himself, "Baby Belle has been asleep these three hours, and mamma, caring nothing for beaux and ball-room, is preparing to follow her." Beaux and ball-room! Pshaw! why should the nonsensical talk of that jackanapes, George Bond, come to his mind just then? The whole tenor of the remarks that succeeded the name that he imagined was his disproved that imagination. But who had left his wife at Newport in the care of a "good-looking" brother-in-law? who had been domesticated in the family of the deluded husband for a fortnight? Pshaw again! What concern had he with that scandalous, doubtless slanderous tattle? "Why did you not marry her when you had the opportunity? She was willing enough!" Could Lucy have spoken thus of her sister? Sarah was barely acquainted with Philip Benson when Lucy wedded him, having met him but once prior to the wedding day at the house of her aunt in the country, from which place his own letter, penned by her father's sick-bed, recalled her. How far from his thoughts then was the rapid train of consequences that followed upon this preliminary act of their intercourse! Did that scoundrel Bond say "Hammond"? It was not a common name, and came quite distinctly to his ears in the high, unpleasant key he so disliked. A flush of honest shame arose to his forehead at this uncontrollable straying of his ideas to a topic so disagreeable, and so often rejected by his mind. "As if--even had I been the person insulted by his pity--I would believe one syllable he said of a woman as far above him in virtue and intellect, in everything good and lovable, as the heavens are above the earth! I would despise myself as much as I do him if I could lend my ear for an instant to so degrading a whisper! I wish I had faced him and demanded the whole tale; yet no! that would have been rash and absurd. Better as it is! By to-morrow I shall laugh at my ridiculous fancies!" "Scratch! scratch! scratch!" The house was so still in the approaching midnight that the slight noise caused him a shock and quiver in the excited state of his nerves. The interruption was something between a scrape and a rap, three times repeated, and proceeding, apparently, from the bookcase at his right. What could it be? He had never seen or heard of a mouse on the premises, nor did the sound much resemble the nibbling of that animal. Ashamed of the momentary thrill he had experienced, he remained still and collected, awaiting its repetition.