The New Magdalen

"Most truly yours, "HORACE HOLMCROFT."

Extracts from the DIARY of THE REVEREND JULIAN GRAY.

FIRST EXTRACT.

...."A month to-day since we were married! I have only one thing to say:

I would cheerfully go through all that I have suffered to live this one

month over again. I never knew what happiness was until now. And better

still, I have persuaded Mercy that it is all her doing. I have scattered

her misgivings to the winds; she is obliged to submit to evidence, and

to own that she can make the happiness of my life.

"We go back to London to-morrow. She regrets leaving the tranquil

retirement of this remote sea-side place--she dreads change. I care

nothing for it. It is all one to me where I go, so long as my wife is

with me."

SECOND EXTRACT.

"The first cloud has risen. I entered the room unexpectedly just now,

and found her in tears.

"With considerable difficulty I persuaded her to tell me what had

happened. Are there any limits to the mischief that can be done by the

tongue of a foolish woman? The landlady at my lodgings is the woman, in

this case. Having no decided plans for the future as yet, we returned

(most unfortunately, as the event has proved) to the rooms in London

which I inhabited in my bachelor days. They are still mine for six weeks

to come, and Mercy was unwilling to let me incur the expense of taking

her to a hotel. At breakfast this morning I rashly congratulated myself

(in my wife's hearing) on finding that a much smaller collection than

usual of letters and cards had accumulated in my absence. Breakfast

over, I was obliged to go out. Painfully sensitive, poor thing, to

any change in my experience of the little world around me which it is

possible to connect with the event of my marriage, Mercy questioned the

landlady, in my absence, about the diminished number of my visitors and

my correspondents. The woman seized the opportunity of gossiping

about me and my affairs, and my wife's quick perception drew the right

conclusion unerringly. My marriage has decided certain wise heads of

families on discontinuing their social relations with me. The facts,

unfortunately, speak for themselves. People who in former years

habitually called upon me and invited me--or who, in the event of my

absence, habitually wrote to me at this season--have abstained with a

remarkable unanimity from calling, inviting, or writing now.

"It would have been sheer waste of time--to say nothing of its also

implying a want of confidence in my wife--if I had attempted to set

things right by disputing Mercy's conclusion. I could only satisfy her

that not so much as the shadow of disappointment or mortification rested

on my mind. In this way I have, to some extent, succeeded in composing

my poor darling. But the wound has been inflicted, and the wound is

felt. There is no disguising that result. I must face it boldly.