The last blow completed that helpless feeling of indignation she had against her husband's incapacity for business. The test of a woman's love, as we have said, is adversity, and poor Mrs. Dorriman had never any love to begin with. She possessed her soul in patience before the world, but only before the world; in secret it was one long incessant protest against her fate. She felt in her heart of hearts, though even to herself she did not so plainly speak, that she had not received her share of the bargain. She had married to get out of her brother's power, and she had been a dutiful if not an affectionate wife, and now she was more in her brother's hands than ever! More because she was a proud woman, and her brother made her plainly understand that much that was painful as regarded her husband's transactions might be brought forward by him if he chose to do so. It was just at that time, just when a helpless sense of loss every where filled her and made her very wretched, and that she was gathering everything together to go away, that Mrs. Dorriman came upon a whole box of papers, some letters all marked and arranged in order, receipts, and other things. Poor Mr. Dorriman's great idea of business was keeping and docketing every line he ever received, and copies of much that he wrote. His widow looked at these documents with something of the pang with which we see the relics of a hand no longer there. Indeed, since her husband's death, the faint affection she had had for him had undergone a change. She was indignant when she thought of his business incapacity, but she missed his kindness and she regretted him more each day, as each day taught her how much he had cared for her. Should she burn these papers, or not? Timid as she was constitutionally--she looked round her, and at that moment she saw her brother coming up to the house. Afraid he might sneer at her sentimentality, or say something to vex her about her looking at them, she hastily pushed the box under the sofa, and sat down, not wishing to conceal anything, but merely from that one idea, that, if he saw her with the old letters before her, he might wound her in some way. Her brother's visit taught her for the very first time that in that box might lie documents of importance to her husband and to her. After sitting down for a moment or two, he rose and moved about restlessly, and then he said-- "I have to find some papers; where did your husband keep his papers?" Without expecting an answer, he said, "Oh, I know, in his writing-table drawers." And, without waiting for her to speak, he went into her husband's room, and she heard him lock the door.