Mr. Wilkinson’s habitual use of brandy had long been a source of trouble to his wife.  In reviewing the painful incidents of the previous evening, a hope had sprung up in her heart that the effect would be to awaken his mind to a sense of his danger, cause him to reflect, and lead to a change of habit.  Alas! how like a fairy frost-work fabric melted this hope away, as the strong breath of her husband fell upon her face.  She turned away and sighed—­sighed in her spirit, but not audibly; for, even in her pain and disappointment, active love prompted to concealment, lest the shadow that came over her should repel the one she so earnestly sought to win from his path of danger.

Ah, who can tell the effort it cost that true-hearted wife to call up the smile with which, scarcely a moment afterwards, she looked into her husband’s face!

“It is no worse, if no better,” was her sustaining thought; and she leaned upon it, fragile reed as it was.

CHAPTER VII.

“Come home early, dear,” said Mrs. Wilkinson, resting her hand upon her husband, and looking into his face with a loving smile.  “The time seems so long when you are away!”

“Does it?” returned Wilkinson, and he kissed his wife.  Yet, did not the tenderness of tone with which he spoke, nor the act of love which accompanied it, hide from the quick perception of Mary the fact that her husband’s thoughts were elsewhere.

“Oh, yes,” she replied.  “I count the hours when you are absent.  You’ll be home early to tea?”

“Certainly I will.  There now, let your heart be at rest.”

And Wilkinson retired.  This was after dinner, on the day that succeeded the opening of our story.

As in the morning, he found it the most natural thing in the world to call in at a certain drinking house and get his accustomed glass of brandy.  As he entered the door of the bar-room, a man named Carlton stepped forward to meet him, with extended hand.  He was an old acquaintance, with whom Wilkinson had often passed an agreeable hour,—­one of your bar-room loungers, known as good fellows, who, while they exhibit no apparent means of support, generally have money to spend, and plenty of time on their hands.

“Glad to see you, Wilkinson; ’pon my soul!  Where have you kept yourself for this month of Sundays?”

Such was the familiar greeting of Carlton.

“And it does one’s eyes good to look upon your pleasant face,” returned Wilkinson, as he grasped the other’s hand.  “Where have you kept yourself?”

“Oh, I’m always on hand,” said Carlton, gayly.  “It’s you who are shut up, and hid away from the pure air and bright sunshine in a gloomy store, delving like a mole in the dark.  The fact is, old fellow! you are killing yourself.  Turning gray, as I live!”

And he touched, with his fingers, the locks of Wilkinson, in which a few gray lines were visible.