“Milk below” (certainly much below “proof”) was answered by the ascent of the busy cooks, when a knock at the door of Mrs Smith’s room from the red knuckles of the housemaid, awoke her to a sense of her equivocal situation.

At her first discovery that a man was in her bed, she uttered a scream of horror, throwing herself upon her knees, and extending her hands before her in her amazement.  The scream awoke Nicholas, who, astonished at the sight, and his modesty equally outraged, also threw himself in the same posture, facing her, and recoiling.  Each looked aghast at each:  each considered the other as the lawless invader; but before a word of explanation could pass between them, their countenances changed from horror to surprise, from surprise to anxiety and doubt.

“Why!” screamed the housekeeper, losing her breath with astonishment.

“It is!” cried Nicholas, retreating further.

“Yes—­yes—­it is—­my dear Nicholas!”

“No—­it can’t be,” replied Nicholas, hearing the fond appellation.

“It is—­oh! yes—­it is your poor unhappy wife, who begs your pardon, Nicholas,” cried the housekeeper, bursting into tears, and falling into his arms.

“My dear—­dear wife!” exclaimed Nicholas, as he threw his arms around her, and each sobbed upon the other’s shoulder.

In this position they remained a minute, when Mr John Forster, who heard the scream and subsequent exclamations, and had taken it for granted that his brother had been guilty of some contretemps, first wiped the remaining lather from his half-shaved chin, and then ascended to the housekeeper’s room, from whence the noise had proceeded.  When he opened the door, he found them in the position we have described, both kneeling in the centre of the bed embracing and sobbing.  They were so wrapt in each other, that they did not perceive his entrance.  Mr John Forster stared with amazement for a few seconds, and thus growled out:—­

“Why, what are you two old fools about?”

“It’s my husband, sir,”—­“It’s my wife, brother John,” cried they, both at once, as the tears coursed down their cheeks.

“Humph!” ejaculated the lawyer, and he quitted the room.

We must let the reader imagine the various explanations which took place between Nicholas and his truly reformed wife, Newton and his uncle, Amber, and everybody in the household, while we narrate the events which had brought about this singular denouement.

The reader may recollect that we left Mrs Forster in the lunatic asylum, slowly recovering from an attack of brain-fever, which had been attended with a relapse.  For many weeks she continued in a state of great feebleness, and during that time, when in the garden, in company with other denizens of this melancholy abode (wishing to be usefully employed), she greatly assisted the keepers in restraining them, and, in a short time, established that superiority over them which is invariably