The hat was the silent, unindicated thing that stood between her and her husband and the rest of the world. She never mentioned it, for she saw that it was forbidden ground. Kind and liberal as her husband was in every other thing, she dared not allude to a matter which had become the centre of his nervous organization, like an indurated sore; and yet she saw, from other than selfish considerations, that this hat was his own worst foe.

Some positive vice - and he had none - some calculating conspiracy - and he was direct as the day - some base amusement or hidden habit or acrid disease would hold him in captivity and pervert his heart less than this simple aberration of behavior. Had he been a hunchback men would have overlooked it; a hideous goitre or wen they would not have resented; but extreme gentility or high-bred courtesy could not refrain from turning to look a second time at a man with a beautiful lady on his arm and a steeple hat upon his head.

The existence of any subject man and wife must not talk together upon, which is yet a daily ingredient of comfort and display, itself disarranges their economy and finally becomes the chronic intruder of their household; and, when it is a trifle, it seems the more an obstacle, because there is no reasoning about it.

This Hat had long ceased to be external: it was worn on Milburn's heart and stifled the healthy throbbing there. It made two men of him, - the outer and the household man, - and, like the Corsican brothers, they were ever conscious of each other, and a word to one aroused the other's clairvoyant sensibility.

"If people would only not observe him," Vesta said, "I think he would lay his hat aside; but that is impossible, and all his pride is in the unending conflict with a law of everlasting society. Who sets a fashion, we do not know; who dares to set one that is obsolete must be a martyr; independence no one can practise but a lunatic. Oh, what tyranny exists that no laws can reach, and how much of society is mere formality!"

Vesta pitied her husband, but the disease was beyond her cure. She had anticipated some compensation for her marriage, in a larger life and society, and in the exercise of her mind, especially in art and music; yet these were purely social things with woman, and the baneful hat was ever darkening her threshold and closing the vista of every other one. She meditated escaping from it by a visit to Europe, which her father had promised her before his embarrassments, and which had been spoken of by Mr. Milburn as due her in the way of musical perfection.

"Uncle," Rhoda Holland said one day, "do put off that old hat. Aunt Vesta could love you so much better! People think it is cruel, uncle. Oh, listen to your wife's heart and not to your pride."

"Stop!" said Milburn. "One more reference to my honest hat and you shall be sent back to Sinepuxent and Mrs. Somers."

It may have been this dreadful threat, or rising ambition, or the fascinations of Judge Custis's position and attentions and remarkable gallantry, that disposed Rhoda to turn her worldly sagacity upon the father of her friend.