Like the passage of a delightful dream were the first five years of her wedded life.  No one was ever happier than she in her married lot, or more unconscious of coming evil.  She loved her husband tenderly and deeply, and he was all to her that she could desire.  One sweet child blessed their union.  At the end of the period named, like the sudden bursting of a fearful tempest from a summer sky, came the illness and death of her aunt, who had been a mother to her from childhood.

Scarcely had her heart begun to recover from this shock, when it was startled by another and more terrible affliction.  All at once it became apparent that her husband was losing his self-control.  And the conversation that she had held with her aunt about him, years before, came up fresh in her memory, like the echo of a warning voice, now heard, alas! too late.  She noticed, with alarm, that he drank largely of brandy at dinner, and was much stupified when he would rise from the table—­always retiring and sleeping for an hour before going back to his business.  Strange, it seemed to her, that she had never remarked this before.  Now, if she had desired it, she could not close her eyes to the terrible truth.

For many weeks she bore with the regular daily occurrence of what has just been alluded to.  By that time, her feelings became so excited, that she could keep silence no longer.

“I wouldn’t drink any more brandy, Edward,” said she, one day at the dinner table; “it does you no good.”

“How do you know that it does not?” was the prompt reply, made in a tone that expressed very clearly a rebuke for interfering in a matter that as he thought, did not concern her.

“I cannot think that it does you any good, and it may do you harm,” the wife said, hesitatingly, while her eyes grew dim with tears.

“Do me harm!  What do you mean, Alice?”

“It does harm, sometimes, you know, Edward?”

“That is, it makes drunkards sometimes.  And you are afraid that your husband will become a drunkard!  Quite a compliment to him, truly!”

“O, no, no, no, Edward!  I am sure you will never be one.  But—­but—­but—­”

“But what?”

“There is always danger, you know, Edward.”

“Oh yes, of course!  And I am going to be a drunken vagabond, if I keep on drinking a glass of brandy at dinner time!”

“Don’t talk so, Edward!” said Mrs. Lee, giving way to tears.  “You never spoke to me in this way before.”

“I know I never did.  Nor did my wife ever insinuate before that she thought me in danger of becoming that debased, despised thing, a drunkard!”

“Say no more, Edward, in mercy!” Mrs. Lee responded—­“I did not mean to offend you.  Pardon me this once, and I will never again allude to the subject.”

A sullen silence followed on the part of Lee, who drank frequently during the meal, and seemed to do so more with the evil pleasure of paining his wife than from any other motive.  So sadly perverting is the influence of liquor upon some men, when opposed, changing those who are kind and affectionate into cruel and malicious beings.