level of hodden-grey; the occupation of the imp Fashion would have been
gone; nay, the angels, for fear of offending mortals, would have
eschewed the nymph Iris, from whom the poets say they steal tints, and
dipt their wings in a grey cloud before appearing in the presence of the
douce daughters of men.

With all these imperfections--and how many husbands would term some of
them perfections!--the married life of Thomas and Janet Dodds might have
gone on for another five years, and five to that, if it had not been
that Thomas, in a weary hour, cast a glance with a scarlet ray in it on
a certain Mary Blyth, who lived in the Grassmarket--a woman of whom our
legend says no more than that she was a widow, besides being fair to the
eye, and pleasant to the ear. We could wish that we had it not to say;
but as truth is more valuable than gold, yea, refined gold, we are under
the necessity of admitting that that red ray betokened love, if an
affection of that kind could be called by a name so hallowed by the
benedictions of poets and the songs of angels. You must take it in your
own way, and with your own construction; but however that may be, we
must all mourn for the fearful capabilities within us, and the not less
awful potentialities in the powers without--the one hidden from us up to
the moment when the others appear, and all wrestling with the enemy
prevented by what is often nothing less than a fatal charm. From that
moment, Thomas Dodds was changed after the manner of action of moral
poisons; for we are to remember that while the physical kill, the other
only transmute, and the transmutation _may be_ from any good below grace
to any evil above the devil.

This change in the mind of the husband included his manner of viewing
those peculiarities in the mental constitution of Janet to which we have
alluded. Her desire to rule him was now rebellion; her devotion to