her husband's face through the aperture, smiling on her and gone in a
moment. For the time this little incident is dismissed without a
thought, but long afterward, when she has been more years a widow than
a wife, that smile recurs and flickers across all her reminiscences of
Wakefield's visage. In her many musings she surrounds the original
smile with a multitude of fantasies which make it strange and awful;
as, for instance, if she imagines him in a coffin, that parting look
is frozen on his pale features; or if she dreams of him in heaven,
still his blessed spirit wears a quiet and crafty smile. Yet for its
sake, when all others have given him up for dead, she sometimes doubts
whether she is a widow.

But our business is with the husband. We must hurry after him along
the street ere he lose his individuality and melt into the great mass
of London life. It would be vain searching for him there. Let us
follow close at his heels, therefore, until, after several superfluous
turns and doublings, we find him comfortably established by the
fireside of a small apartment previously bespoken. He is in the next
street to his own and at his journey's end. He can scarcely trust his
good-fortune in having got thither unperceived, recollecting that at
one time he was delayed by the throng in the very focus of a lighted
lantern, and again there were footsteps that seemed to tread behind
his own, distinct from the multitudinous tramp around him, and anon he
heard a voice shouting afar and fancied that it called his name.
Doubtless a dozen busybodies had been watching him and told his wife
the whole affair.

Poor Wakefield! little knowest thou thine own insignificance in this
great world. No mortal eye but mine has traced thee. Go quietly to thy
bed, foolish man, and on the morrow, if thou wilt be wise, get thee