greatly when he sat upon a Parliamentary committee, for he was apt to get confused on the points he knew best, and his knowledge did not stand him in stead at the moment it was wanted, as knowledge ought to do; but still what with the Blue books and the estate, he thought himself very fully occupied, and what could be desired more than this? Two or three times in the day, especially when it rained, he would come into his wife’s morning room, and stand up with his back to the fire and talk, sometimes relevantly, sometimes irrelevantly, like most other people. But he was always serious, whether relevant or not. He had a long face, with grey whiskers and grey hair, and a long upper lip shutting close upon the under, which was feeble, though the chin too was rather long. His face in these wintry days, when there was no news of Arthur, was as serious as a countenance well could be. Whether he was talking of his son or not, Arthur was always more or less in Sir John’s mind, and never smile, or glimmering of a smile, approached within a hundred miles of the serious lines of that long upper lip. Lady Curtis was of a different disposition altogether. The last extremity of grief even could not produce in her the monotony of melancholy which was possible to her husband. She would weep as he never wept; but then she would laugh also in sheer impatience of the weight of tedium and sameness. Her suffering was far more acute than his steady dullness; but it was broken by gleams of activity, by sudden impulses, by perpetual changes. She flung herself into her housekeeping, stirring up all the quiet corners, and making a commotion in the servants’ hall, such as for some time threatened the family peace--and into the parish, where Lucy did not always want her mother’s assistance. She wrote letters to her friends, half cynical, half sorrowful, and more than half amusing, in which Arthur indeed was never referred to; but where many a cutting sentence, sharp jest, or mocking reflection betrayed that sting of personal suffering which those who knew her best could read between the lines. Lady Curtis was clever. She wrote articles now and then in literary papers, even sometimes in magazines; but this was an indulgence of which she was not proud, and she prudently kept silence about it, being wise enough to know that any such crown of wild olive sits badly upon the matronly brow of a country lady, alarming some people, and giving to others occasion for ill-natured jibes and pleasantry. Not her husband certainly, and even not Lucy knew always when she took upon herself the office of critic; and the able editor who printed her reviews was not aware what had made his contributor more industrious than usual and more bitter. It was Arthur that pointed the clear steel of those polished little arrows which she discharged at the world. She did it as a relief to herself; but not that anyone might know. And it must be added that there was a certain satisfaction in this safety