{Begun in the December number. ] 
A MODERN 
INSTANCE.* 
BY W. D. HOWELLS, 
Author of “ Venetian Life,’ “A Chance Acquaintance,” “The Undiscovered Countfy,” etc. 
Vi 
ed too little for Marcia’s 
happiness, and aftér dinner she did not let 
Bartley forget his last night’s engagement. 
She sent him off to get his horse at the hotel, 
and ran up to her room to put on her wraps 
for the drive. Her mother cleared away the 
dinner things; she pushed the table to the 
side of the room, and then sat down in 
her feather-cushioned chair\\and waited her 
husband’s pleasure to speak.\ He ordinarily 
rose from the Sunday dinner and, went back to 
his office; to-day he had taken a\chair before 
the stove. But he had mechanically put his 
hat on, and he wore it pushed off his forehead 
as he tilted his chair back on its hind legs, 
and braced himself against the hearth, of the 
stove with his feet. 
A man is master in his own house geéner- 
ally through the exercise of a certain degreé,o 
brutality, but Squire Gaylord maintained his 
predominance by an enlightened absenteeigii 
No man living always at home was evef so\ 
TuHeE house se 
Gaylord in the family-room/where they now 
sat in unwonted companiorship. 
“Well, Mr. Gaylord,” said his wife, “I 
don’t know as you can gay but what Jarcia’s 
suited well enough.” 
This was the firsf allusion they had made 
to the subject, byt she let it take the argu- 
mentative form of her cogitations. 
“M-yes,” sighed the Squire, in long, nasal 
assent, “most too well, if anything.” He 
rasped first gne unshaven cheek and then the 
other, with’his thin, quivering hand. 
“ He’s/smart enough,” said Mrs. Gaylord, 
as befoye. 
“ Méyes, most too smart,” replied her hus- 
band/ a little more quickly than before. “He’s 
smaft enough, even if she wasn’t, to see from 
thé start that she was crazy to have him, and 
at isn’t the best way to begin life for a mar- 
ried couple, if I’m a judge.” 
“Tt would killed her if she hadn’t got him. 
I could see ’twas wearin’ on her every day, 
more and more. She used to fairly jump, every 
knock she’d hear at the door; and I know 
little under his own roof. While he was in \sometimes, when she was afraid he wasn’t 
more active business life, he had kept an 
office in the heart of the village, where he 
spent all his days, and a great part/of every 
night; but after he had become meh enough 
to risk whatever loss of business/the change 
might involve, he bought this large old square 
house on the border of the villafe, and thence- 
forth made his home in th¢ little detached 
office. 
If Mrs. Gaylord had dimly imagined that 
she should see something/more of him, having 
him so near at hand, shé really saw less: there 
was no weather, by day or night, in which he 
could not go to his office, now. He went no 
more than his wifé into the village society ; 
she might have Jeen glad now and then of 
a little glimpse/of the world, but she never 
said so, and hér social life had ceased like 
her religious fife. Their house was richly fur- 
nished according to the local taste of the 
time ; the farlor had a Brussels carpet, and 
heavy chairs of mahogany and _hair-cloth; 
Marcia had a piano there, and since she had 
come home from school they had made com- 
pany, As Mrs. Gaylord called it, two or three 
times for her; but they had held aloof from 
the festivity, the Squire in his office, and Mrs. 
* Copyright, 1881, by W. D. Howells. 
oming, she used to go out, in hopes ’t she 
sh’d meet him: I don’t suppose she allowed 
to\herself that she did it for that—Marcia’s 
proud.” 
“M-yes,” said the Squire, “she’s proud. 
And when a proud girl makes a fool of her- 
self about a fellow, it’s a matter of life and 
death with her. She can’t help herself. She 
lets go éverything.” 
“I declare,” Mrs. Gaylord went on, “it 
worked me up considerable to have her come 
in some those times, and see by her face ’t 
she’d seen him with some the other girls. She 
used to /ook\so! And then I'd hear her up in 
her room, cryin’ and cryin’. I shouldn’t cared 
so much, ‘if Marcia’d been like any other girl, 
kind of flirty, ike, about it. But she wa’n’t. 
She was just bowed down before her idol.” 
A final assent ‘came from the Squire as if 
wrung out of his ‘heart, and he rose from his 
chair, and then sat down again. Marcia was 
his child, and he loved her with his whole 
soul. 
“M-well!” he deeply sighed, “all that 
part’s over, anyway,” but he tingled in an 
anguish of sympathy with what she had suf- 
fered. “ You see, Miranda, how she looked 
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