alive, and I never think of exceeding that. I need no more, and I desire
no more. But Mrs. Chantrey grows quite excited, almost violent at times.
It makes me more anxious than words can express."

There was a long pause, Mr. Warden neither lifting his head nor opening
his mouth. His pale face flushed a little, and his lips quivered. David
Chantrey was his dearest friend, and an almost intolerable sense of
shame and dread kept him silent. His wife, of whom he always spoke so
tenderly in all his letters to him! The very spot where he was listening
to this charge against her, David's vestry, seemed to deepen the shame
of it, and the unutterable sorrow, if it should be true.

"What would you counsel me to do?" asked Mrs. Bolton, after a time.
"Must I write to my nephew and tell him?"

"Do!" he cried, with sudden eagerness and emphasis; "do! Take the
temptation out of her way at once. Let everything of the kind be removed
from the house. Let no one touch it, or mention it in her presence.
Guard her as you would guard a child from taking deadly poison."

"Impossible!" exclaimed Mrs. Bolton. "Have no wine in my house? You
forget my station and its duties, Mr. Warden, I must give dinner parties
occasionally; I must allow beer to my servants. It is absurd. Nobody
could expect me to take such a step as that."

"Listen to me," he said, earnestly, and with an authority quite at
variance with his ordinary shyness. "I do not venture to hope for any
other remedy. I have known men, ay, and women, who have not dared to
pass close by the doors of a tavern for fear lest they should catch but
the smell of it, and become brutes again in spite of themselves. Others