The curate had been in the study all the morning.  Three times had his wife softly turned the handle of his door, but finding it locked, had re-turned the handle yet more softly, and departed noiselessly.  Next time she knocked—­and he came to her pale-eyed, but his face almost luminous, and a smile hovering about his lips:  she knew then that either a battle had been fought amongst the hills, and he had won, or a thought-storm had been raging, through which at length had descended the meek-eyed Peace.  She looked in his face for a moment with silent reverence, then offered her lips, took him by the hand, and, without a word, led him down the stair to their mid-day meal.  When that was over, she made him lie down, and taking a novel, read him asleep.  She woke him to an early tea—­not, however, after it, to return to his study:  in the drawing-room, beside his wife, he always got the germ of his discourse—­his germon, he called it—­ready for its growth in the pulpit.  Now he lay on the couch, now rose and stood, now walked about the room, now threw himself again on the couch; while, all the time his wife played softly on her piano, extemporizing and interweaving, with an invention, taste, and expression, of which before her marriage she had been quite incapable.

The text in his mind was, “Ye can not serve God and Mammon.”  But not once did he speak to his wife about it.  He did not even tell her what his text was.  Long ago he had given her to understand that he could not part with her as one of his congregation—­could not therefore take her into his sermon before he met her in her hearing phase in church, with the rows of pews and faces betwixt him and her, making her once more one of his flock, the same into whose heart he had so often agonized to pour the words of rousing, of strength, of consolation.

On the Saturday, except his wife saw good reason, she would let no one trouble him, and almost the sole reason she counted good was trouble:  if a person was troubled, then he might trouble.  His friends knew this, and seldom came near him on a Saturday.  But that evening, Mr. Drew, the draper, who, although a dissenter, was one of the curate’s warmest friends, called late, when, he thought in his way of looking at sermons, that for the morrow must be now finished, and laid aside like a parcel for delivery the next morning.  Helen went to him.  He told her the rector was in the town, had called upon not a few of his parishioners, and doubtless was going to church in the morning.

“Thank you, Mr. Drew.  I perfectly understand your kindness,” said Mrs. Wingfold, “but I shall not tell my husband to-night.”

“Excuse the liberty, ma’am, but—­but—­do you think it well for a wife to hide things from her husband?”

Helen laughed merrily.

“Assuredly not, as a rule,” she replied.  “But suppose I knew he would be vexed with me if I told him some particular thing?  Suppose I know now that, when I do tell him on Monday, he will say to me, ’Thank you, wife.  I am glad you kept that from me till I had done my work,’—­what then?”