pale cheerless spring daylight came at last, and Mrs. Gilbert fell asleep just when it was nearly time for her to think of getting up. The doctor breakfasted alone that morning, as he had dined the day before. He begged that Isabel might not be disturbed, A good long spell of rest was the best thing for his wife's head, he told Mrs. Jeffson; to which remark that lady only replied by a suspicious kind of sniff, accompanied by a jerk of the head, and followed by a plaintive sigh, all of which were entirely lost upon the parish surgeon. "Females whose headaches keep 'em a-bed when they ought to be seeing after their husband's meals hadn't ought to marry," Mrs. Jeffson remarked, with better sense than grammar, when she took George's breakfast paraphernalia back to the kitchen. "I heard down the street just now, as _he_ come back to the Priory late last night, and I'll lay she'll be goin' out to meet him this afternoon, William." Mr. Jeffson, who was smoking his matutinal pipe by the kitchen fire, shook his head with a slow melancholy gesture as his wife made this remark. "It's a bad business, Tilly," he said, "a bad business first and last. If _he_ was anything of a man, he'd keep away from these parts, and 'ud be above leadin' a poor simple little thing like that astray. Them poetry-hooks and such like, as she's allus a-readin', has half turned her head long ago, and it only needs a fine chap like him to turn it altogether. I mind what I say to Muster Jarge the night as I fust see her; and I can see her face now, Tilly, as I see it then, with the eyes fixed and lookin' far away like; and I knew then what I know better still now, my lass,--them two'll never get on together. They warn't made for one another. I wonder sometimes to see the trouble a man'll take before he gets a pair o' boots, to find out as they're a good fit and won't gall his foot when he comes to wear 'em; but t' same man'll go and get married as careless and off-hand like, as if there weren't the smallest chance of his wife's not suiting him. I was took by thy good looks, lass, I won't deny, when I first saw thee," Mr. Jeffson added, with diplomatic gallantry; "but it wasn't because of thy looks as I asked thee to be my true wife, and friend, and companion, throughout this mortal life and all its various troubles." CHAPTER XXV. "FOR LOVE HIMSELF TOOK PART AGAINST HIMSELF."