On this occasion, when I was shown into the drawing-room, both Mr. and Mrs. Sherwin were awaiting me there.  On the table was the sherry which had been so perseveringly pressed on me at the last interview, and by it a new pound cake.  Mrs. Sherwin was cutting the cake as I came in, while her husband watched the process with critical eyes.  The poor woman’s weak white fingers trembled as they moved the knife under conjugal inspection.

“Most happy to see you again—­most happy indeed, my dear Sir,” said Mr. Sherwin, advancing with hospitable smile and outstretched hand.  “Allow me to introduce my better half, Mrs. S.”

His wife rose in a hurry, and curtseyed, leaving the knife sticking in the cake; upon which Mr. Sherwin, with a stern look at her, ostentatiously pulled it out, and set it down rather violently on the dish.

Poor Mrs. Sherwin!  I had hardly noticed her on the day when she got into the omnibus with her daughter—­it was as if I now saw her for the first time.  There is a natural communicativeness about women’s emotions.  A happy woman imperceptibly diffuses her happiness around her; she has an influence that is something akin to the influence of a sunshiny day.  So, again, the melancholy of a melancholy woman is invariably, though silently, infectious; and Mrs. Sherwin was one of this latter order.  Her pale, sickly, moist-looking skin; her large, mild, watery, light-blue eyes; the restless timidity of her expression; the mixture of useless hesitation and involuntary rapidity in every one of her actions—­all furnished the same significant betrayal of a life of incessant fear and restraint; of a disposition full of modest generosities and meek sympathies, which had been crushed down past rousing to self-assertion, past ever seeing the light.  There, in that mild, wan face of hers—­in those painful startings and hurryings when she moved; in that tremulous, faint utterance when she spoke—­there, I could see one of those ghastly heart-tragedies laid open before me, which are acted and re-acted, scene by scene, and year by year, in the secret theatre of home; tragedies which are ever shadowed by the slow falling of the black curtain that drops lower and lower every day—­that drops, to hide all at last, from the hand of death.

“We have had very beautiful weather lately, Sir,” said Mrs. Sherwin, almost inaudibly; looking as she spoke, with anxious eyes towards her husband, to see if she was justified in uttering even those piteously common-place words.  “Very beautiful weather to be sure,” continued the poor woman, as timidly as if she had become a little child again, and had been ordered to say her first lesson in a stranger’s presence.

“Delightful weather, Mrs. Sherwin.  I have been enjoying it for the last two days in the country—­in a part of Surrey (the neighbourhood of Ewell) that I had not seen before.”

There was a pause.  Mr. Sherwin coughed; it was evidently a warning matrimonial peal that he had often rung before—­for Mrs. Sherwin started, and looked up at him directly.