While he went back to his work! In those few words might have been told the dismal history of two lives. The husband went to his work, and gave his heart and soul to breaches of contract and actions for damages, to libel and divorce cases, to actions in debt, trespass, assumpsit, trover, and ejectment; and the wife saw him go out and come in, heard his tired sigh, as he sank half-exhausted into his easy chair, but remained utterly ignorant and unsympathising. She had just at first tried to understand her husband's career, and had questioned him upon the subject of his laborious days and studious nights; but when he tried to explain some interesting case--a great will case--in which the issue of a tedious suit depended on the signification of the words "then" and "forthwith,"--whether the former was meant to specify a particular time, or had reference to some other antecedent time; and whether the latter meant "immediately" or within a convenient time after a certain event,--her mind lost itself among the complications of the law, and she was fain to confess herself mystified rather than enlightened by her husband's explanation. He kissed her, and told her he would never plague her again with such dry details; and from that hour he very rarely talked of business in his wife's presence. But he thought of it, and that, for Cecil, was a great deal worse. At breakfast, at dinner, when his young wife was talking to him in her brightest and most animated manner, she would stop suddenly, chilled and discouraged by the discovery that the great barrister had not heard a word of her discourse. After telling him about a new book--a fresh view of Mary Queen of Scots, by a French historian; an anti-Carlyleian essay on Frederick of Prussia; a passionate, classic tragedy, by a new poet--Cecil would look hopefully for some answering ray of interest in her husband's face, and would behold his eyes fixed and staring, and hear his lips murmuring faintly to himself, "The defendant seems to me to have no case, and the plaintiffs will be entitled to recover if Giddles and Giddles can show that the letter was posted on the twenty-first; the defendant must be held in law to be the purchaser, and therefore responsible for every bale of the cotton. The cases Slattery _v._ Spindleshanks, 30th Law Digest, Q.B., page 102, and Capers _v._ Pepper, in the Weekly Reports, are almost in point--humph!--yes, yes; but old Giddles must be kept out of the witness-box, and Giddles junior pinned to the date and postmark of that letter; and--yes, yes----"