THE TYRANNY OF THE UNSUITABLE.

(A Fragmentary Christmas Tragedy.)

The atmosphere of the chamber is heavy with a portentous sense of paralysing dread; the fire cowers in the grate, cold at its very heart; the gas-flame shudders with a shuddering not caused by water in the pipes. Mr. Dredferley Cornerd, seated in his arm-chair, glares at his newspaper with preoccupied and unreceptive eye; while ever and again his hand passes nervously over his care-lined brow. Mrs. Dredferley Cornerd glances furtively at him through the perforations of her fancy-work, held between tremulous fingers; her eye is dilated, while her pale brow is puckered by the lines that whisper of prescience of impending calamity. Mr. Dredferley Cornerd feels that his wife's eye is upon him; he strives to avoid her gaze; but, fascinated, yields; and their eyes meet.

[(enlarge)]

Mrs. Dredferley Cornerd (huskily). James——

[Thrice he raised his outspread hands in wild, unvoiced deprecation; he clutches at his throat, as if suffocating; then buries his face in his trembling hands, and, in a hollow, far-off gurgle, says "Go on!" She goes to him, and smoothes his throbbing brow.

Mrs. D. C. James, let us nerve ourselves to it once more! Let us remember Duty! Come; we will plunge at once into the thick of it. What is Jane to have?

Mr. Dredferley Cornerd (hurling himself from his chair, his eye ablaze with unspeakable hate). Nothing—a bottle of poison—a dynamite bomb—the cat-o'-nine tails! Hear me, Mary-Ann. One year ago, at this very season that brings this haunting, maddening torture of the selection of Christmas presents, my sister Jane sent us that ormolu clock which at this very moment glares upon us from that mantel-piece! I loathe ormolu. Had we not laboured and struggled, you and I, to furnish this, our dining-room, in perfect taste, all in old oak and Flemish pottery. Then, in the very moment of our triumph, arrived that loathsome clock of ormolu, and crushed our whole design! It had to go there, lest we gave offence. I hate my sister Jane!