as to fondle those tender creatures; his eldest girl knew him, and was in ecstasy whenever he approached; and the little pair of babies, by their mere soft helplessness, gave him an indescribable sense of fondness and refreshment.  His little ones were all the world to him, and he could not see how a pattern mother should ever be so happy as with them around her.  He forgot the difference between the pastime of an hour and the employment of a day.  The need of such care on her part was the greater since the nursery establishment was deficient.  The grand nurse had almost abdicated on the double addition to her charge, and had only been bribed to stay by an ill-spared increase in wages, and a share in an underling, who was also to help Charlotte in her housemaid’s department.  Nevertheless, the nurse was always complaining; the children, though healthy, always crying, and their father always certain it was somebody’s fault.  Nor did the family expenses diminish, retrench his own indulgences as he might.  It was the mistress’s eye that was wanting, and Isabel did not know how to use it.  The few domestic cares that she perceived to be her duty were gone through as weary tasks, and her mind continued involved in her own romantic world, where she was oblivious of all that was troublesome or vexatious.  Now and then she was aware of a sluggish dulness that seemed to be creeping over her higher aspirations—­a want of glow and feeling on religious subjects, even in the most sacred moments; and she wondered and grieved at a condition, such as she had never experienced in what she had thought far more untoward circumstances.  She did not see the difference between doing her best when her will was thwarted, and her present life of neglect and indulgence.  Nothing roused her; she did not perceive omissions that would have fretted women of housewifely instincts, and her soft dignity and smooth temper felt few annoyances; and though James could sometimes be petulant, he was always withheld from reproving her both by his enthusiastic fondness, and his sense that for him she had quitted her natural station of ease and prosperity.

On a dark hazy November afternoon, when the boys had been unusually obtuse and mischievous, and James, worn-out, wearied, and uncertain whether his cuts had alighted on the most guilty heads, strode home with his arm full of Latin exercises, launched them into the study, and was running up to the drawing-room, when he almost fell over Charlotte, who was scouring the stairs.

She gave a little start and scream, and stood up to let him pass.  He was about to rebuke her for doing such work at such an hour; but he saw her flushed, panting, and evidently very tired, and his wrath was averted.  Hurrying on to the drawing-room, he found Isabel eagerly writing.  She looked up with a pretty smile of greeting; but he only ran his hand through his already disordered hair, and exclaimed—­

’Our stairs are like the Captain of Knockdunder’s.  You never know they are cleaned, except by tumbling over the bucket and the maid.’