Sarah could not have told why she revolved all this in her unquiet mind as he sat near her, playing with their child; yet she did think of their strange sad history, and from the review arose a feeling of pity, sincere, almost tender for him, so worthy and so deceived. She remembered with abasement of spirit how often she had been ready to hate him as the instrument of her bondage; how wrathful words had arisen to her lips at the moment of his greatest kindness; how patiently he had borne her coldness; how unflagging was his care of and for her. Over the dark, turbulent gulf of the unforgotten past that sundered their hearts, she longed, as she had never done before, to call to him, and confessing her sin against Heaven and against him, to implore pardon for the sake of the spotless babe that smiled into the father's face with its mother's eyes. Would he be merciful? Slowly and emphatically memory repeated in her ear his denunciation of the unloving wife, and courage died before the menaced curse. "Fudge! Fiddlesticks! what frippery nonsense!" cry out, in a vehement storm of indignation, a bevy of the Common Sense connection. "Are we not staid and respectable matrons all? Do we not rear our daughters virtuously, and teach our sons to honor father as well as mother? Yet who of us troubles herself with raking in the cold ashes of her 'long ago' for the bones of some dead and gone love--a girlish folly of which she would be ashamed now? What cares Mr. Common Sense, among his day-books and ledgers, in his study or in his office, how many times his now correct helpmeet pledged eternal fidelity to other lovers before she put her last crop of wild oats into the ground, and settled for life with him? What if some of us, may be all, if driven hard, should admit that when we stood up before the minister we underwent certain qualms--call them pangs, if you like--at the thought of Tom This, or Harry That, or Dick The Other, who, if circumstances had permitted, we would have preferred should occupy the place of 'The man whom we actually held by the hand!' While men can choose their mates, and women can only take such as propose to them, these things will happen. After all, who is hurt? You aver that none of you are, mesdames, and we would not call your word in question. Ladies so conscientious must, of necessity, be veracious, even in love affairs." "I am a thoughtless animal!" said Lewis at the dinner-table. "There is a letter from Lucy! Open it--don't mind me! I will crack your nuts for you while you read it." There was a troubled look in Sarah's eye when she laid it down. "Lucy says they are certainly coming North this year--that we may look for them in a week from the date of this. This is rather sooner than mother expected them. Her housecleaning is late this season, in consequence of her rheumatic spell in May."