The evening was lonely and long to Mrs. Marshall, and there was a shadow over her feelings that she endeavoured in vain to dispel. Her husband's knock, which came between ten and eleven o'clock, and for which she had been listening anxiously for at least an hour, made her heart bound and tremble, producing a feeling of weakness and oppression. As she opened the door for him, it was with a vague fear. This was instantly dispelled by his first affectionate word uttered in steady tones. He was still himself! Still as he had been for the blessed two years that had just gone by! "What is the matter, Jane? You look troubled," the husband remarked, after he had seated himself, and observed his wife's appearance. "Do I?--If so, it is because I have felt troubled this evening." "Why were you troubled, Jane?" "That question I can hardly answer, either to your satisfaction or my own," Mrs. Marshall said. "From some cause or other, my feelings have been strangely depressed this evening; and I have experienced, besides, a consciousness of coming misery, that has cast a shadow over my spirits, even now but half dispelled." "But why is all this, Jane? There must be some cause for such a change in your feelings." "I know but one cause, dear husband!" Mrs. Marshall said, in a voice of deep tenderness, laying her hand upon her husband's arm as she spoke, and looking him in the face with an expression of earnest affection. "Speak out plainly, Jane. What is the cause?" "Do not be offended, Jonas, when I tell you, that I have not been so overcome by such gloomy feelings since that happy day when you signed the pledge, as I have been this evening. The cause of these feelings lies in the fact of your having become dissatisfied with that pledge. I tremble, lest, in some unguarded moment, under the assurance that old habits are conquered, you may be persuaded to cast aside that impassable barrier, which has protected your home and little ones for so long and happy a time." "You are weak and foolish, Jane," her husband said, in a half-offended tone. "In many things I know that I am," was Mrs. Marshall's reply, "but not in this. A wife who loves her husband and children as tenderly as I do mine, cannot but tremble when fears are suddenly awakened that the footsteps of a deadly enemy are approaching her peaceful dwelling." "Such an enemy is not drawing nigh to your dwelling, Jane." "Heaven grant that it may not be so!" was the solemn ejaculation. "To this, Marshall felt no inclination to reply. He had already said enough in regard to his pledge to awaken the fears of his wife, and to call forth from her expressions of strong opposition to his views of the nature of his obligation. His silence tended, in no degree, to quiet her troubled feelings.