A frosty day in December. Time had gone on, winter had come in: the seasons go their round, whatever the world may be doing.

How grew Clara Lake? Better? Well, she did not seem to grow much better; at any rate, she was not well, and the old doctor at Katterley, who had known her constitution from infancy, appeared puzzled. She dressed, as in her days of health, and went about the house: on fine days would go out for a walk in the sunshine: but she remained weak and debilitated, and could not get rid of her cough.

Compared to the dangerous attack she had at Guild, of course her present state seemed to be a vast improvement. On first coming home, the change for the better appeared to be marvellous; and Mr. Lake, never seeing anything but the bright side of things, congratulated himself that she was well again. The improvement did not go on as it ought to have gone; but the falling off was so gradual, the increasing degrees of weakness were so imperceptible, that he neither saw nor suspected either. Had any one told him his wife was in a bad way, he had simply stared in amazement. Latterly the inertness, the seeming debility had certainly made itself apparent to him, but only as a dim idea; so little importance did he attach to it, that he set it all down to apathy on his wife\'s part, and chided her for not "rousing herself." He did not mean to be unkind; never think that of him; for his wife he would have gone through fire and water, as the saying runs; but he was light, unobservant by nature, and careless.

He was enjoying himself immensely. Chiefly dividing his leisure time between Katterley and Guild. To-day he would be at home with his wife, tomorrow with Lady Ellis; the affectionate husband to the one, saying soft nothings (it must be supposed) to the other. Of course he never went for the sake of seeing my lady; certainly not; there was an excuse ever ready. Mrs. Chester had given him this commission, and he must go and report to her; or Mrs. Chester had given him the other; or she wanted to consult him on her affairs, which were going downwards; or he went over to escort some of the Jupps; or he had business with his tailor; for he had fallen into a freak to employ one who lived at Guild. On one plea or another, a plausible excuse for taking him to Guild never failed.

The fault of this lay partially with Mrs. Chester. Nearly at her wits\' end lest Lady Ellis, wearied with the monotony of the house, should leave her; plainly seeing that Mr. Lake\'s visits were the sole attraction that kept her, Mrs. Chester invented demands upon him to draw him over to Guild. That the confidential footing on which he and Lady Ellis continued was scarcely seemly for a married man, Mrs. Chester completely ignored. She shut her eyes to it; just as she had shut them in the days when Clara was at Guild. I am telling the simple truth of the woman, and things took place exactly as I am relating them. What mattered it to Mrs. Chester whether the wife\'s feelings were pained, outraged, so long as her own ends were served? Clara was at a safe distance, seeing nothing; and, after all, it was but a bit of passing nonsense between them--there was no real wrong, reasoned Mrs. Chester in her sophistry. "What the eye does not see the heart cannot rue."

"But Mr. Lake ought not to have given way to her," remonstrates the upright reader. Of course he ought not, everybody knows that; but he liked the pastime. Lady Ellis made herself uncommonly attractive to him, and it never occurred to him to see that she ought not to have done so. She was exacting now; saying to him "You must come tomorrow," or "You must come the next day." They rode together and walked together as before; not so much, because it was winter weather; and they strolled out in the wide gardens in the dim afternoons, and sat alone very much in the drawing-room by twilight.

Unfortunately these pleasant arrangements were not kept from Clara. If she had partially forgotten her jealousy upon returning home, her husband\'s constant visits to Guild, and the whispers reaching her from thence, brought it back in all its unhappy force. She was not told purposely. Of the Jupps, the only one whose eyes were open to the flirtation going on--that is, to a suspicion that it was deeper than it ought to be, considering that Mr. Lake had a wife--was the eldest of them, Mary. She held her tongue. But the others, after a day spent at Guild, would jokingly allude in Clara\'s hearing to the soft hours spent together by him and Lady Ellis, and tell her she ought to keep her husband in better order. They meant nothing. Had Clara been there she might have thought far less of it than she was doing; incertitude always increases suspicion, just as jealousy makes the food it feeds on. So Mrs. Lake sat at home with her cough, and her increasing weakness, and her miserable torture; conscious of little save one great fact, that her husband was perpetually at Guild. Had he gone more openly, as it were, without framing (as he invariably did) some plausible plea for the journey, she had thought less. What could Clara do? Could she descend to say to him, you shall not go there? No; she suffered in silence; but it was killing her.

A bright December morning, clear and frosty, Mrs. Lake was seated at the window in their comfortable room, making tiny little flannel petticoats. There was a good deal of distress in Katterley, and she was intending to give warm garments to sundry poor half-naked children. Stooping over the work, her cheeks had acquired their hectic tinge, seen frequently now, otherwise the face was pale and thin; the fingers were attenuated. Mr. Lake, who had been looking at the newspaper, reading occasional scraps of news from it to his wife, rose from his chair by the fire and stretched himself.

"How busy you are, little wife! Who on earth are all those small things for?"

"The poor children in the cottages by the brick-fields. They are so badly off, Robert," she added, glancing up, with a pleading look. "I could not help doing something for them."

"All right, my dear; do whatever you like. Only, don\'t over-work yourself."

"There\'s no fear of that. Elizabeth will do part of them; and Mary Jupp is coming to help me."

"What a lovely day it is for December!" he added, looking at the sparkling sunlight.

"Very. It almost tempts me to go out."

"I will take you tomorrow, Clara; I must go to Guild today."

Mrs. Lake resumed her work with trembling fingers. "Penelope\'s watch is at Van Buren\'s. I promised faithfully to take it to her today."

"Are there no watchmakers at Guild, that Mrs. Chester should send her watch to Katterley?"

"I don\'t know. I brought it to him at her request a fortnight ago. Van Buren has a great name in his trade, you know."

As he spoke he looked at his own watch; it was time to depart.

"Shall you be home to dinner, Robert?"

"No. But I shall to tea. I shall be in by the seven train. Good-bye, Clary."

She raised her face with its crimson hectic colour, the result of emotion, to receive his farewell kiss. Its loveliness could but strike him.

"How well you are getting to look, my darling," he said, tenderly.

And it would no doubt have astonished Mr. Lake excessively could he have glanced back at his wife through the garden and the walls of the house as he went off, gaily whistling. Dropping her work on the floor, she fell into a storm of sobs in her utter self-abandonment. Miss Jupp came in, and so found her.

"Clara! Clara!"

Up she got: but to affect indifference was an impossibility. Mary Jupp, greatly shocked, took the sorrowful face in her sheltering arms.

"Tell me what it is, Clara. Open your poor little heart to me, my dear. I am older than you by many years, and have had trouble myself. Where\'s your husband?"

"Gone to Guild."

"Oh," said Miss Jupp, shortly, who had her private opinion on many things. "Well, dear, he has got a nice day for it."

Clara dried her eyes and stifled her sobs, and sat down to work again.

"I am so stupid," she said, in a tone of apology. "Since my illness I don\'t feel strong; it makes me cry sometimes."

Mary Jupp said no more, perhaps wisely. She took her things off and remained the day. And Mr. Lake got home, not by seven at night, but by the last train.

Christmas approached, and Mrs. Lake got thinner and weaker. Still her husband suspected nothing amiss. She rose in the morning, went through her duties, such as they were, and had a bright colour. How was he, an unobservant man by nature and habit, to detect that it was all wrong? Had he suspected the truth, none would have been more anxiously troubled than he.

It was in Clara Lake\'s nature to conceal what was amiss. With these reticent temperaments, a great grief touching the heart, a grief unto death, never can be spoken of. At the last, perhaps, when hours are numbered, but not always then. He saw no signs of it: the low spirits, the nervous weakness were given way to when alone: never before him. Except that she had grown strangely still and quiet, he saw no alteration. She tried to be cheerful, and succeeded often.

So the days, as I have said, glided on, bringing the end nearer and nearer. Mr. Lake went on his heedless way, and she sat at home and did silent battle with the anguish that was killing her. Her history is drawing to a close. The world, going round in its hard, matter-of-fact reality, is apt to laugh at such stories; but they are taking place, for all that, in some of its nooks and corners.

One day, when it wanted but three or four to Christmas, Mr. Lake tempted his wife into the greenhouse to see his winter plants. She was more cheerful than customary--talked more; an artificial renovation had brought back some of the passing strength.

"Clary, I have promised to spend Christmas-day with Penelope."

A sudden rush of colour to her wasted cheeks, a pause, and a response that came forth faintly.

"Have you?"

"She said how dull it would be for us at home, and would not take a denial. You will be able to go?"

"I go!" She glanced at him in surprise, and shook her head.

"Why not?"

"I am too ill."

Mr. Lake felt annoyed. The proposed expedition had been presenting itself to his mind in a very agreeable light: for his wife to set her face against it, whether on the plea of ill-health or any other plea, would be especially provoking.

"My dear, I tell you what it is," he said in a voice that betrayed his temper, "you will fancy yourself ill and lie-by and stay at home, until it ends in your being ill."

"Do you think I am well?"

"You are not strong; but if you would rouse yourself, and go more out, and shake off fancies, you would soon become so. An illness, such as yours was in the autumn, leaves its weakening effects behind it as a matter of course; but there\'s no sense in giving way to them."

"I go out sometimes."

"Just for a walk or so; that does little good. What you want is cheerful society; change. You have not been once to Guild since we came home."

"You make up for it, then; you are there often enough."

She could not help the retort; it seemed to slip from her tongue unguided. Mr. Lake kicked out at a broken pot.

"Something or other is always happening to take me there. Mrs. Chester loads me with commissions, and I don\'t like to refuse to execute them."

They went in. Mr. Lake returned to the charge.

"You will go on Christmas-day, Clary, won\'t you? Penelope is preparing for us."

"No; I am not well enough. And if I were, I should prefer to be at home. Say no more," she added almost passionately interrupting what he was about to urge. "You ought not to wish me to go there."

A long silence. "I shall go. I must. I can\'t get off it."

She did not speak.

"What is to be done, Clara? It will never do for me to spend Christmas-day there, and you to spend it at home." And he finished the clause by breaking out, half-singing, half muttering, with the lines of a popular ditty that our childhood was familiar with--

"To-morrow is our wedding-day, and all the world would stare
If wife should dine at Edmonton, and I should dine at Ware."
>

She sat with her hands folded before her, and did not immediately answer. If he could not tell what was to be done, or what ought to be done, she would not. Mr. Lake looked at her and waited.

"You must do as you think right," she said, laying a slight stress upon the word. "I am too unwell to be anywhere but at home on Christmas-day."

Mr. Lake left the room, whistling to hide his anger. Had he possessed the worst wife in the world he had never reproached or quarrelled with her. Some men cannot be actively unkind to women, and he was one. He thought her very obstinate, unreasonably so, and said to himself that he would go to Guild. If Clara did not come to her senses beforehand and accompany him, his going without her would bring her to them after. Not another word was said between them; each seemed to avoid the subject.

Christmas-day dawned, cloudy but tolerably fine. Mr. Lake was going to Guild. Not doing exactly as he though............