She looked again up timidly in his face, and said, her voice trembling, and her cheeks wet, for she could not wipe away the tears, because Tom still held her hands as one might those of a naughty child: "But, Tom! I don't exactly see how you can make so much of it, when you don't think me--when you know I am not fit to go among such people." To this Tom had no reply at hand: he was not yet far enough down the devil's turnpike to be able to tell his wife that he had spoken the truth--that he did not think her fit for such company; that he would be ashamed of her in it; that she had no style; that, instead of carrying herself as if she knew herself somebody--as good as anybody there, indeed, being the wife of Tom Helmer--she had the meek look of one who knew herself nobody, and did not know her husband to be anybody.

He did not think how little he had done to give the unassuming creature that quiet confidence which a woman ought to gather from the assurance of her husband's satisfaction in her, and the consciousness of being, in dress and everything else, pleasing in his eyes, therefore of occupying the only place in the world she desires to have.

But he did think that Letty's next question might naturally be, "Why do you not take me with you ?" No doubt he could have answered, no one had ever asked her; but then she might rejoin, had he ever put it in any one's way to ask her?
It might even occur to her to in-quire whether he had told Mrs.Redmain that he had a wife! and he had heart enough left to imagine it might mortally hurt her to find he lived a life so utterly apart from hers--that she had so little of the relations though all the rights of wifehood.

It was no wonder, therefore, if he was more than willing to change the subject.

He let the poor, imprisoned hands drop so abruptly that, in their abandonment, they fell straight from her shoulders to her sides.
"Well, well, child!" he said; "put on your bonnet, and we shall be in time for the first piece at the Lyceum." Letty flew, and was ready in five minutes.