“It strikes me, Honor,” he said, laying down the paper which he had ostensibly been studying, and speaking in a cold hard tone, at which his wife inwardly rebelled, “it strikes me that you have been talking a precious deal of what I call nonsense. You ‘do this,’ and you ‘don’t do it;’ You _think_, and you ‘hate thinking.’ Upon my soul, I’m ashamed, and that’s the truth, to hear you talk such rubbish. Now, I’ll just tell you what it is. I met Dr. Kempshall yesterday, and we got talking a little about you. Says he, laughing, ‘I tell you what it is, Beacham; you are spoiling that wife of yours by kindness. Women are delightful creatures,’ says he; ‘but it doesn’t do to let them have _all_ their own way. She wants shaking up a bit, she does; and, above all, she mustn’t--take my word for it--be given way to. Those nerves that young women talk about are the deuce and all when they get too much ahead;’ and, upon my soul, I begin to think he’s right.” The ready tears rose to Honor’s eyes at this unexpected rebuke; while, alas, swift as the lightning’s flash, the thought that _one_ she had known in days gone by would not have used her so, darted through her brain. “I did not mean to be troublesome; I beg your pardon,” she said, with a half proud, half sad submission which almost frightened John; and then, slowly rising from her chair, she left the two alone to talk over her behaviour as it pleased them best. Honor Beacham had now known for many a month the true and rightful cause of a discontent and a misery which, however little justified by that cause, grew daily less endurable. That cause, she understood full well at last, had always, ever since the day when she accepted the hand of plain John Beacham, been in existence. It had required, however, certain concurrent events to bring it fully and unquestionably to light; and those concurrent events had not, unfortunately, been wanting in the home of Honor Beacham. The real and very melancholy truth, to leave off speaking darkly, lay in this--namely, that Honor Beacham was perfectly unsuited, not only to the life she was fated to lead, but also to that most excellent John himself. Something of this had been dimly shadowed out to her in the early days of courtship; but more, far more, was revealed when the dry and uninteresting details of home life took the place of honeyed words and pleasing compliments. But it was reserved (is it not mostly so?) for the force of _contrast_ to put the finishing touch to such deadly domestic discoveries as these. Very trying to Honor, after she had grown familiar with the refined voice, the subdued laugh, and all the conventional _graces_ (as they appeared to her) of Arthur Vavasour, was the jubilant hilarity, the rather noisy speech, and, alas, the occasional philological lapses of her socially-untutored husband. Slowly, yet very surely, the evil worked, undermining imperceptibly the moral system, and rendering insecure the foundations