"Certainly," answered Mr. Warden, with painful abruptness.

"Sacred as a confession!" repeated Mrs. Bolton. "I must tell you, then,
that I am in the greatest trouble about my nephew's wife. You know how
ill she was last winter, after he went away. A low, nervous fever, which
hung over her for months. She would not listen to my telling David about
it, and, indeed, I was reluctant to distress and disturb him about a
matter that he could not help. But she is very strange now; very strange
and flighty. Possibly you may have observed some change in her?"

"Yes," he replied, still looking down on the floor, but seeing a vision
of Sophy pacing the beaten track to the little grave under the vestry
window.

"When she was at the worst," pursued Mrs. Bolton, "and I had the best
advice in London for her, she was ordered to take the best wine we could
get. I told Brown to bring out for her use some very choice port,
purchased by the archdeacon years ago. She must have perished without
it; but unfortunately--I speak to you as her pastor, in confidence--she
has grown fond of it."

"Fond of it?" repeated Mr. Warden.

"Yes," she answered, emphatically; "I leave the cellar entirely in
Brown's charge; a very trusty servant; and I find that Mrs. Chantrey has
lately been in the habit of getting a great deal too much from him. But
she will take anything she can get that will either stupefy or excite
her. She never writes to David until her spirits are raised by
stimulants of one kind or another. It is a temptation I cannot
understand. I take a proper quantity, just as when the archdeacon was