gins to make a show in his style of living, he is looked at with some suspicion, and that remarks detrimental to his credit float about, and often affect him seriously. From some things casually said by Mr R- in my presence since we went to housekeeping, I feel well satisfied that if we had taken the house, since rented by Mr Riston, and furnished it elegantly, it would have done me no good, and might, in the end, have led to a separation from the firm.'

"Oh no. Don't think so, James. I am sure that would not have taken place," said Anna, laying her hand upon her husband's forehead, and smoothing back his hair. This little act was only an effort to keep down the feelings that were struggling for expression and ready to gush forth.

"It is the truth, dear.

from heaven."

You are my angel-guide, sent

Anna's tears flowed freely. She could keep them back no longer.

"You

"I will always seek to deserve your love and your confidence," she murmured, sinking into his arms. shall never find a single thorn in your path planted by my hand, if God will only endow me with wisdom to act well my part. But I tremble when I reflect, that I am liable, at almost every moment, through error of judgment, to go wrong."

"You will never go far wrong, Anna," was her husband's encouraging reply, "if you continue as you have begun, to seek for direction from above-if a religious principle be the life-germ of all your actions. For my own part, I have no fears. Come what may, no disaster

that visits me will ever be traced to your selfishness and folly."

"I pray Heaven that it may not!" was the wife's fervent answer.

CHAPTER XII. HOW IT AFFECTED HER HUSBAND'S

CREDIT.

Mr RISTON tried his best to entertain, as far as his personal attentions were concerned, the mass of people he had, jointly with his wife, invited to be witnesses of his folly. But he felt like a criminal all the evening. There were more than a dozen persons present to whom he was largely indebted, and upon whose confidence and forbearance towards him depended everything. "How will all this affect them?" was a question constantly in his mind. When, at a late hour in the morning, he shook hands with the last departing guest, and returned to his still brilliantly lighted but deserted rooms, he threw himself upon a sofa with a heavily-drawn sigh.

"It won't

"What ails you, man?" said his wife. kill you outright, I think. It is our first attempt at housekeeping, and we have opened handsomely."

"Have gone up like a rocket," returned the husband, in a tone of bitterness.

Mrs Riston looked at him with a slight curl of the lip. "Soon to come down like the stick," he added, still more bitterly.

"You talk very strangely. What am I to understand by such language?"

"Why, that ten chances to one this brilliant party of yours-not mine-will ruin me."

"You are mad."

"I was mad, I confess, to let you make such a fool of yourself and me too. But I am sane enough now. I tried to tell you that I could not afford all this extravagant waste of money. But you shut your ears and would not hear me. You will both hear and feel before long. Your glory will be as short-lived as the early flower and the morning dew."

"You are raving, Mr Riston!" said his wife, growing pale.

"I am not a man used to much extravagant speech. It would have been well for both of us, if you had made this discovery earlier; if you had believed me when I said I could not afford to spend money in certain ways proposed by you. I might as well have talked against the wind! But it is no use to upbraid you now-to throw your folly into your teeth. Necessity will do that soon enough; and Heaven grant that you may profit by the lesson you will receive."

"Mr Riston, will you be kind enough to tell me what you mean-to speak out in plain and intelligible language?" This was said with an alarmed countenance, but in a steady voice; the wife looking fixedly at her husband. Her lips were firmly drawn together. "The simplest language I can use in this," replied Mr Riston; "and it is such as I have used over and over again without being heeded. I am not able to afford this style of living, nor to give an extravagant party such as you have given to-night. What is the natural conse

quence which follows, when a man expends more than he can afford to spend? Of course he goes to the dogs, where I have now a very fair prospect of going, and that quite speedily. There were more than a dozen men here to-night, either of whom could make me a bankrupt in a week. It is only necessary to raise the cry that I am living beyond my means, which is a fact, and my credit is gone. Take that from me, and I am lost!"

"Credit! Have you nothing but credit? "

"Not much more, at present. I have lost a large amount by failures this year; and now my business is so clogged up that I am obliged to borrow large sums of money every day, in order to meet my payments. Destroy my credit, and you ruin me. That even you' must see." "But it is more than I can see, how this party or this house is going to destroy your credit."

"A few weeks will probably open your eyes," Mr Riston said, in an angry voice; and, rising, he left the room, and went up to his chamber.

"But

"All very fine," he muttered, glancing around. these are frost-work luxurics. They will soon melt away."

The presence during the evening of so many of the very men on whose estimation of his standing in business depended his safety, had set Mr Riston to thinking seriously about the ultimate effects of the extravagant expenditures apparent to every eye. It was this that had sobered him so much during the evening. The more closely he thought about it, the more he felt alarmed.

The next day was one of Mr Riston's hard days. He had three heavy bills to meet, and four hundred pounds,

borrowed money, to return. The thought of what was before him kept him awake during the greater part of the night. He would not have been so uneasy, had he not felt that, after the display he had made, the effort to borrow money would come with a bad grace.

Everything wore a very different aspect at the breakfast table on the morning that succeeded to the splendid entertainment. Mr Riston sat in thoughtful silence, and tried to eat, but every mouthful was taken with an effort. Mrs Riston was the picture of distress. The solemn earnestness of her husband, more than his words, had alarmed her. If his affairs should be at the crisis he said they were, it would be, she felt, a terrible stroke. What! To give up her splendid mansion! To shrink back into a still deeper obscurity than that from which she had emerged! The thought alone almost drove her mad.

"You cannot be in earnest in what you told me last night, Mr Riston," she said, unable to keep silence,

"If I was ever in earnest in my life, I am in earnest now," was replied. "I could have weathered through my difficulties, had I not insanely yielded to your miserable infatuation, and incurred all this expense, and what is worse, laid myself open to remarks and suspicions that will almost inevitably ruin me."

Mr Riston spoke angrily. His wife made no answer; but burst into tears, and rising from the table left the

room.

The unhappy man sat musing for some time, and then withdrew from the breakfast room and passed the parlours, where he looked around in order to satisfy himself by a new observation, in regard to the impression that