and the husband and wife were left alone.

Dr. Grey threw himself into his arm-chair, and there came across his
face the weary look, which Christian had of late learned to notice,
indicating that he was no more a young man, and that his life had been
longer in trials than even in years.

"My dear, I wish you women-kind could settle these domestic troubles
among yourselves. We men have so many outside worries to contend
with. It is rather hard."

It was hard. Christian reproached herself almost as if she had been the
primary cause of this, the first complaint she had ever heard him make,
and which he seemed immediately to regret having allowed to escape
him.

"I don't mean, my dear wife, that you should not have told me this;
indeed, it was impossible to keep it from me. It all springs from Aunt
Henrietta. I wish she--But she is Aunt Henrietta, and we must just
make the best of her, as I have done for nearly twenty years."

"And why did you?" rose irrepressibly to Christian's lips. The sense of
wild resistance to injustice and wrong, so strong in youth, was still not
beaten down. It roused in her something very like fierceness--these
gentle creatures can be fierce sometimes--to see a good man like Dr.
Grey trodden down and domineered over by this narrow-minded, bad-
tempered woman. "I often wonder at your patience, and at all you
forgive."

"Seventy times seven," was the quick answer. And Christian became