“Has Virginia made a really good match?” Mr. Dinsmore asked, addressing his sister Adelaide.

“Good! it could hardly be worse!” she exclaimed.  “Would you have believed it? we found them in a tenement-house, living most wretchedly.”

“Is it possible!  He was not wealthy then?  Or has he lost his means since the marriage?”

“As far as I can learn,” said Mr. Allison, “he has always lived by his wits; he is a professional gambler now.”

“Dreadful!  How does he treat his wife?”

“Very badly indeed, if we may credit her story.  They live, as the saying is, like cat and dog, actually coming to blows at times.  They are both bitterly disappointed, each having married the other merely for money; which neither had.”

Mr. Dinsmore looked greatly concerned.  “Virginia was never a favorite of mine,” he remarked, “but I do not like to think of her as suffering from either poverty or the abusive treatment of a bad husband.  Can nothing be done to better her condition?”

“I think not at present,” said Adelaide; “she has made her bed and will have to lie in it.  I don’t believe the man would ever proceed to personal violence if she did not exasperate him with taunts and reproaches; with slaps, scratches, and hair pulling also, he says.”

“O disgraceful!” exclaimed her uncle.  “I have no pity for her if she is really guilty of such conduct.”

“She told me herself that on one occasion she actually threw a cup of coffee in his face in return for his accusation that she and her mother had inveigled him into the marriage by pretences to wealth they did not possess.  Poor Louise!  I have no doubt her attack was brought on by the discovery of the great mistake she and Virginia had made, and reproaches heaped on her for her share in making the match.”

“‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,’” sighed Mr. Dinsmore.  “I presume Virginia was too proud to show herself here among relatives whose approval of the match had not been asked, and acquaintances who had heard of it as a splendid affair?”

“Your conjecture is entirely correct,” said Adelaide.  “She gave vent to her feelings on the subject in her mother’s presence, supposing, I presume, as I did, that not being able to speak or move, she was also unable to hear or understand, but it was evident from the piteous expression her countenance assumed and the tears coursing down her cheeky that she did both.”

“Poor Louise! she has a sad reaping—­so far as that ungrateful, undutiful daughter is concerned; but Isa, Calhoun, and Arthur are of quite another stamp.”

“Yes, indeed! she will surely find great comfort in them.  I wish Isa was not so far away.  But you have not told me how my dear old father is.  How has he borne this shock?”

“It was a shock of course, especially to one so old and feeble; but I left him calmly staying himself upon his God.”