"His wife," said Dora.

I durst not ask the child any more questions.

"Eustace, who is Meg?"

I could not but ask that question as we sat tete-a-tete after dinner,
Dora having gone to carry Harold some fruit, and being sure to stay
with him as long as he permitted.

Eustace looked round with a startled, cautious eye, as if afraid of
being overheard, and said, as Dora had done, "His wife."

"Not alive?"

"Oh, no--thank goodness."

"At his age!"

"He was but twenty when he married her. A bad business! I knew it
could not be otherwise. She was a storekeeper's daughter."

Then I learnt, in Eustace's incoherent style, the sad story I
understood better afterwards.

This miserable marriage had been the outcome of the desolate state of
the family after the loss of all the higher spirits of the elder
generation. For the first few years after my brothers had won their
liberation, and could hold property, they had been very happy, and