realization of the handsomest and most romantic figure ever imagined by painter, could have said this, with a more impressive and affecting dignity than the plain old Doctor did.

‘But I am not prepared,’ he went on, ‘to deny — perhaps I may have been, without knowing it, in some degree prepared to admit — that I may have unwittingly ensnared that lady into an unhappy marriage.

I am a man quite unaccustomed to observe; and I cannot but believe that the observation of several people, of different ages and positions, all too plainly tending in one direction (and that so natural), is better than mine.’

I had often admired, as I have elsewhere described, his benignant manner towards his youthful wife; but the