He walked over to the corner of the room, picked up the little volume, and smoothed the crumpled leaves; for his habits were orderly, and the sight of a book lying open upon the carpet was unpleasant to him. Of course poor George was right, and Isabel was a very capricious, ill-tempered young woman when she flew into a passion of rage and grief because her husband counted his fingers while she was reading to him. But then such little things as these make the troubles of people who are spared from the storm and tempest of life. Such sorrows as these are the Scotch mists, the drizzling rains of existence. The weather doesn't appear so very bad to those who behold it from a window; but that sort of scarcely perceptible drizzle chills the hapless pedestrian to the very bone. I have heard of a lady who was an exquisite musician, and who, in the dusky twilight of a honeymoon evening, played to her husband,--played as some women play, pouring out all her soul upon the keys of the piano, breathing her finest and purest thoughts in one of Beethoven's sublime sonatas. "That's a very _pretty tune_," said the husband, complacently. She was a proud reserved woman, and she closed the piano without a word of complaint or disdain; but she lived to be old, and she never touched the keys again. CHAPTER XII. SOMETHING LIKE A BIRTHDAY. It happened that the very day after Isabel's little outbreak of passion was a peculiar occasion in George Gilbert's life. It was the 2nd of July, and it was his wife's birthday,--the first birthday after her marriage; and the young surgeon had planned a grand treat and surprise, quite an elaborate festival, in honour of the day. He had been, therefore, especially wounded by Isabel's ill-temper. Had he not been thinking of her and of her pleasure at the very moment when she had upbraided him for his lack of interest in the Alien? He did _not_ care about the Alien. He did not appreciate "Clotilde, Clotilde, my dark Clotilde! With the sleepy light in your midnight glance. We let the dancers go by to dance; But we stayed out on the lamplit stair, And the odorous breath of your trailing hair Swept over my face as your whispers stole Like a gush of melody through my soul; Clotilde, Clotilde, my own Clotilde!" But he loved his wife, and was anxious to please her; and he had schemed and plotted to do her pleasure. He had hired a fly--an open fly--for the whole day, and Mrs. Jeffson had prepared a basket with port and sherry from the Cock, and all manner of north-country delicacies; and George had written to Mr. Raymond, asking that gentleman, with the orphans of course, to meet himself and his wife at Warncliffe Castle, the show-place of the county. This Mr. Raymond had promised to do; and all the arrangements had been carefully planned, and had been kept profoundly secret from Isabel.