ignore my more subtle griefs, succeeding so far in that I became more and more of a thorough materialist every day, loving bodily ease, appetizing food, costly wine, and personal indulgence to a degree that robbed me gradually of even the desire for mental effort. I taught myself moreover, almost insensibly, to accept and tolerate what I knew of the wanton side of my wife's character,--true, I respected her less than the Turk respects the creature of his harem,--but like the Turk, I took a certain savage satisfaction in being the possessor of her beauty, and with this feeling, and the brute passion it engendered, I was fain to be content. So that for a short time at least, the drowsy satisfaction of a well-fed, well-mated animal was mine,--I imagined that nothing short of a stupendous financial catastrophe to the country itself could exhaust my stock of cash,--and that therefore there was no necessity for me to exert myself in any particular branch of usefulness, but simply to 'eat drink and be merry' as Solomon advised. Intellectual activity was paralysed in me,--to take up my pen and write, and make another and higher bid for fame, was an idea that now never entered my mind; I spent my days in ordering about my servants, and practising the petty pleasures of tyranny on gardeners and grooms, and in generally giving myself airs of importance, mingled with an assumption of toleration and benevolence, for the benefit of all those in my employ. I knew the proper thing to do, well enough!--I had not studied the ways of the over-wealthy for nothing,--I was aware that the rich man never feels so thoroughly virtuous as when he has inquired after the health of his coachman's wife, and has sent her a couple of pounds for the outfit of her new-born baby. The much prated-of 'kindness of heart' and 'generosity' possessed by millionaires, generally amounts to this kind of thing,--and when, if idly strolling about my parklands, I happened to meet the small child of my lodge-keeper, and then and there bestowed sixpence upon it, I almost felt as if I deserved a throne in Heaven at the right hand of the Almighty, so great was my appreciation of my own good-nature. Sibyl, however, never affected this sort of county-magnate beneficence. She did nothing at all among our poor neighbours;--the clergyman of the district unfortunately happened to let slip one day a few words to the effect that "there was no great want of anything among his parishioners, owing to the continual kindness and attention of Miss Clare,"--and Sibyl never from that moment proffered any assistance. Now and then she took her graceful person into Lily Cottage and sat with its happy and studious occupant for an hour,--and occasionally the fair author herself came and dined with us, or had 'afternoon tea' under the branching elms on the lawn,--but even I, intense egotist as I was, could see that Mavis was scarcely herself on these occasions. She was always