It was on his wife’s lips to tell him that he said innumerable words of which he was unaware, about quite other matters, on every kind of subject, but all showing the way his thoughts were tending, but she forbore; for sweet as it is to be understood, it is not so sweet to be shown how you betray yourself and lay bare your secrets unwittingly to the eye of day. It was not difficult to divine that his mind was now very much taken up by the thought of his children, not merely in the way of love and desire to see them, but from an overmastering anxiety as to how they would bear his wife’s inspection, and what their future place in his life would be. In his many thoughts on the subject, he had decided that he must see them first and judge of that. During the three months in which he had been seeing with Evelyn’s eyes and perceiving with her mind, various things had changed for James Rowland. He was not quite aware of the agency, nor even that a revolution had taken place in him, but he was conscious of being more and more anxious about the effect which everything would produce on her, and specially, above all other things, of the effect that his children would produce. And he had said and done many things to make this very visible. For his own part he thought he had concealed it completely, and even that she gave him credit for too much feeling in imputing to him that eagerness to see them, to take his boy and his girl into his arms, which she had just said was so natural. He preferred to leave that impression on her mind. The feelings she imputed to him would have been her feelings, she felt sure, had she been coming home to her children after so long a separation. He could not say even to himself that this was his feeling. He had done without them for a very long time, perhaps he could have gone on doing without them. But what would Evelyn say to them? Would they be fit for her notice? Would they shock and startle her? What manner of beings would they seem in her eyes? It was on the cards that did she show any distaste for them, their father, who was their father after all, might resent it secretly or openly--for the claims of blood are strong; but at the present moment this was not at all in his thoughts. His thoughts were full of anxiety to know how they would please her, whether they were worthy to be brought at all into her presence. Mrs. Rowland would fain have assured him that his anxiety was unnecessary, and that, whatever his children were, they would be her first duty; but she was too understanding to do even this. All that she could do to help him in the emergency, was to accept his pretext and give him her approval, and tell him it was the most natural thing in the world. Useless to say that she was anxious too, wondering how the experiment would turn out. Whether the lowly upbringing would be so great a disadvantage as she feared, or whether the more primitive laws of that simpler social order would develop the better faculties, and