“It is never too late to mend; it is not too late for you to stop quietly at home and do your duty by your husband.”

“Most men would think that I had done my duty by him pretty well.  Twenty years ago you were nobody, and had, comparatively speaking, nothing.  Now you have a title and between three and four thousand a year.  Who have you to thank for that?  Certainly not yourself.”

“Curse the title and the money!  I had rather be a poor devil of an attorney with a large family, and five hundred a year to keep them on, than live the life I do between you and that vulgar beast Caresfoot.  It’s a dog’s life, not a man’s;” and poor Bellamy was so overcome at his real or imaginary wrongs that the tears actually rolled down his puffy little face.

His wife surveyed him with some amusement.

“I think,” she said, “that you are a miserable creature.”

“Perhaps I am, Anne; but I tell you what it is, even a miserable creature can be driven too far.  It may perhaps be worth your while to be a little careful.”

She cast one swift look at him, a look not without apprehension in it, for there was a ring about his voice that she did not like, but his appearance was so ludicrously wretched that it reassured her.  She finished her egg, and then, slowly driving the spoon through the shell, she said,

“Don’t threaten, John; it is a bad habit, and shows an un-Christian state of mind; besides, it might force me to cr-r-rush you, in self-defence, you know;” and John and the egg-shell having finally collapsed together, Lady Bellamy ordered the brougham.

Having thus sufficiently scourged her husband, she departed in due course to visit her own taskmaster, little guessing what awaited her at his hands.  After all, there is a deal of poetic justice in the world.  Little Smith, fresh from his mother’s apron-strings, is savagely beaten by the cock of the school, Jones, and to him Jones is an all-powerful, cruel devil, placed above all possibility of retribution.  If, however, little Smith could see the omnipotent Jones being mentally ploughed and harrowed by his papa the clergyman, in celebration of the double event of his having missed a scholarship and taken too much sherry, it is probable that his wounded feelings would be greatly soothed.  Nor does it stop there.  Robinson, the squire of the parish, takes it out of the Reverend Jones, and speaks ill of him to the bishop, a Low Churchman, on the matter of vestments, and very shortly afterwards Sir Buster Brown, the Chairman of the Quarter Sessions, expresses his opinion pretty freely of Robinson in his magisterial capacity, only in his turn to receive a most unexampled wigging from Her Majesty’s judge, Baron Muddlebone, for not showing him that respect he was accustomed to receive from the High Sheriff of the county.  And even over the august person of the judge himself there hangs the fear of the only thing that he cannot commit for contempt, public opinion.  Justice! why, the world is full of it, only it is mostly built upon a foundation of wrong.