the interest of a fortune. But now it glittered once again under the innumerable lights, a heterogeneous, a somewhat barbarous, medley of magnificence. Lady Helena, without being personally self-indulgent--without caring particularly about eating delicately or being softly clad--had a natural taste for splendor, which may often be independent both of vanity and the love of ease. Human pomp suited her as the pomp of nature suits the mind of the artist and the poet; instead of paralyzing or oppressing her, it only made her feel the more perfectly at home. John Stanburne had known beforehand that his clever wife would order the festivities well, and he had felt no anxiety about her management in any way, but he had not quite counted upon this charming gayety and ease. There are ladies who, upon occasions of this kind, show that they feel the weight of their responsibility, and bring a trouble-clouded visage to the feast. They cannot really converse, because they cannot really listen. They hear your words, perhaps, but do not receive their meaning, being distracted by importunate cares. Nothing kills conversation like an absent and preoccupied hostess; nothing animates it like her genial and intelligent participation. Surely, John Stanburne, you may be proud of Helena to-night! What would your festival have been without her? He recognizes her superiorities, and admires them; but he would like to be delivered from the little inconveniences which attend them. That clear-headed little woman has rather too much of the habit and the faculty of criticism, and John Stanburne would rather be believed in than criticised. Like many other husbands, he would piously uphold that antique religion of the household which sets up the husband as the deity thereof--a king who can do no wrong. If these had been his views from the beginning--if he had wanted simple unreasoning submission to his judgment, and unquestioning acceptance of his actions--what a mistake he made in choosing a woman like Lady Helena! He who marries a woman of keen sight cannot himself expect to be screened from its keenness. And this woman was so fearless--shall we say so proud?--that she disdained the artifices of what might have been a pardonable hypocrisy. She made John Stanburne feel that he was living in a glass case,--nay, more, that she saw through his clothes--through his skin--into his viscera--into his brain. You must love a woman very much indeed to bear this perpetual scrutiny, or she must love you very much to make it not altogether intolerable. The Colonel had a reasonable grievance in this, that in the presence of his wife he found no moral rest. But her criticisms were invariably just. For example, in that last cause of irritation between them--that about the horses--Lady Helena had been clearly in the right. It was, to say the least, a want of good management on the Colonel's part to have all the carriage-horses at Sootythorn on the day of her arrival. And so it always was.