Husks

A merry family party gather around the Hammond's generous table, that afternoon. All the Hunts were there—from the father down to Jeannie, who was fast shooting up into a tall girl, somewhat pert in manner, but lovable despite this, at times, unpleasant foible.

"Sister Lucy," she said, after an interval of silence, "Ellen West said, at school, to-day that you were a great belle when you were a young lady; were you?"

"You must not ask me, Jeannie!" The old smile of conscious beauty stole into Lucy's cheeks.

"Was she, sister?" Jeannie referred the case to Sarah.

"Yes, my dear, she was very beautiful," replied the latter, simply.

"She isn't now—not so very handsome, I mean—no handsomer than you are, sister!"

"Jeannie! you forget yourself!" interposed Mrs. Hunt.

"Why, mamma, I did not intend to be rude! Only I thought that belles were always the prettiest ladies that could be found anywhere."

"By no means!" corrected Lewis, willing to help his wife's pet out of a scrape. "There are many descriptions of belles, Jeannie: handsome, rich, fast, and intellectual."

"And as papa was not rich, I suppose you were either fast or intellectual, sister Lucy!" persisted the child.

"I thought her pretty fast when I tried to catch her," said Philip.—"Mrs. Hunt, Mrs. Hammond, Mrs. Benson, have you ladies decided in the course of to-day's congress what watering-place is to be made the fashion by our clique next month?"

Mrs. Hunt replied that they inclined to Newport; principally on account of Lucy and the children, who would all be benefited by the bathing.

Lucy was sure that she should tire of Saratoga or the Catskills in a week, whereas she adored the ocean.

"What says Madame Discretion?" said Lewis, merrily, to his wife.

"Except that it would break up the family party, I had rather stay at home as long as it is prudent to keep the baby in town; then, if you could go with us, spend a month at some mountain farmhouse or seaside cottage," she answered.

"Hear! hear!" commanded Philip. "Behold a modern wedded dame who prefers seclusion with her liege lord to gayety without him! The age of miracles is returning!"

"Is the case, then, so anomalous?" retorted Sarah, the red spot in her cheek alone testifying to her embarrassment. "Are your Southern matrons all public characters?"

"I can answer that!" said Lucy. "They are slaves! housekeeping machines—nothing better!"

"How many more weak places are there in this crust of family chit-chat, I should like to be informed!" thought the annoyed and uninitiated Hammond. "Here goes for the spot where there is no danger of anybody's breaking in!" He spoke aloud. "A tempting proposal was made to me this morning. It is considered advisable for one of our firm to go abroad for a couple of months, perhaps longer, to divide his time among the principal manufacturing districts of England, Scotland, and France. Expenses paid by the firm, and the term of absence indefinitely prolonged, if the traveler wishes it. Mr. Marlow is tired of crossing the ocean, and presses me to accept the mission."

"What did you tell him?"

It was Sarah who spoke in a startled voice that drew general notice to her alarmed face. Her concern was a delicious tribute to her husband's self-love, if he possessed such a quality. At least he loved her well enough to be pleased at her manifest reluctance to have him leave her.

"I told him that I must ask my wife," said he in a meek tone, belied by the humorous twinkle in his eye, and loving half-smile about his mouth. "See what it is to be one under authority, Benson! A man dare not conclude an ordinary business transaction without the approval of the powers that be."

When Sarah accompanied her sister to her chamber that night, the passee belle put a direct question.

"Tell me, Sarah, are you as much in love with Mr. Hammond as you seem to be, or is it all put on for the benefit of outsiders?"

"I am not apt to do anything for the sake of mere show; nor do I care for the opinion of 'outsiders,' as you call them," rejoined Sarah, amazed at the cool audacity of the inquiry, and disposed to resent Lucy's confident expectation that she would avow the cheat, if such there were, in her deportment.

"You used to be shockingly independent, I know. What a ridiculously honest little puss you were! How you despised all our pretty arts and necessary affectations! How you hated our economical mother's second-best furniture and dinners! I don't believe Victoria West has ever forgiven you for the way in which you used to take to pieces what you styled our 'surface talk and surface life!' I thought, however, that you had discovered by this time, that one cannot live in the world without deceiving herself or other people; I prefer making fools to being one. Heigh-ho! this life is a very unsatisfactory business at the best. What a heavenly collar that is of yours! One thing I do wish, and that is—that my husband were half as fond of me, or as good to me, as Lewis is to you!"

CHAPTER XIV.

Lewis Hammond had thrown the whole weight of his influence in the family conclave into the Newport scale; and to this popular resort Sarah went, in July, in company with the Bensons, her mother and Jeannie, who was made one of the party at Lewis' request and expense. The generous fellow acted in conformity with conscience and judgment in this temporary exile of his treasures; and, consistent in his purpose of rendering it a pleasure excursion to his wife, he made very light of his prospects of lonely widowerhood, representing, instead, the benefit she and the babe would draw from the sea-breezes, and his enhanced enjoyment of his weekly visits, because they were so far apart. He went with them to the shore, at their general flitting, and spent two days; saw for himself that those whose comfort was nearest his heart were properly accommodated; privately feed chambermaid and waiter, with hints of future emolument to accrue to them from special regard to the wants of Mrs. Hammond and her infant, and returned to town with the unenviable consciousness of having left at least three-fourths of himself behind him.

A brisk rush of business beguiled him of the aching, hollow void for a few hours after he got back. Not even Baby Belle's accents could be heard amid that roar and whir. But at luncheon-time, while waiting for his order to be filled at a restaurant, the dreary, solitary void overtook him—a fit of unmistakable home-sickness, that yet caused him to recoil at the idea of entering the deserted house uptown, when evening should oblige him to seek a lodging. How were Sarah and baby getting along without him? He was afraid that Lucy was not, in all respects, as congenial a companion as he could have wished his wife to have, and that Mrs. Hunt's undisguised worldliness, her foolish love of fashion and display, would often annoy and mortify her sensible and right-judging daughter. Benson was capital company, though—a gentleman every inch of him! and very friendly to Sarah. But for her reserved manners he would act the part of a real brother to her; in any case, he would be kind, and see that she wanted for nothing.

Then—shot into his head by some unseen and unaccountable machinery—there darted across his mind a fragment of a conversation he had overheard, at entering his parlor, the day before the Bensons left. Philip and Lucy were standing before a miniature painting of Sarah and her child, completed and brought home a short time previous. Although seemingly intent upon the picture, their conversation must have strayed far from the starting-point, for the first sentence that reached the unintentional listener was a tart, scornful speech from Lucy, that could by no stretch of the imagination be made to apply to her sister.

"If you admire her so much, why did you not marry her when you had the opportunity? She was willing enough!"

"Take care you do not make me regret that I did not do so!" was Philip's stern rejoinder as he turned from her.

The change of position showed him that Lewis was present, and for a second his inimitable self-possession wavered. Recovering himself, he reverted to the picture, and called upon his host to decide some disputed point in its artistic execution which he and Lucy were discussing.

"Poor fellow! he has learned that all is not gold that glitters!" mused Lewis to the newspaper he was pretending to read. "Lucy had a high reputation for amiability before she was Mrs. Benson. There is no touchstone like the wedding ring to bring out one's true qualities."

He sat with his back to the entrance of the saloon, and the table directly behind him was now taken possession of by three or four new arrivals—all gentlemen, and apparently on familiar terms with one another. They called for a bountiful lunch, including wine, and plunged into a lively, rather noisy talk. Lewis closed his ears, and applied himself in earnest to his paper. He started presently at a word he could have declared was his name. Restraining the impulse to look around and see who of the group was known to him, he yet could not help trying to determine this point by their voices. One, a thin falsetto, he fancied belonged to George Bond, who was no more of a favorite with him than was his better half with Sarah. Lewis regarded him as a conceited rattlepate, whose sole talent lay in the art of making money—whose glory was his purse. "Why should he be talking about me here? Nonsense; I was mistaken!" and another page of the newspaper was turned.

"When I leave my wife at Newport, or anywhere else, in the particular and brotherly care of one of her former flames, publish me as a crazy fool!" said the wiry voice again, almost in the reader's ear.

"He doesn't know old stories as well as you do, perhaps," remarked some one.

"I should think not! When my wife pulls the wool over my eyes in that style, horsewhip me around town, and I won't cry 'Quarter!' Sister's husband or not, I'll be hanged if I would have him in my house for two weeks, and he is such a good-looking dog, too!"

He stopped, as if his neighbor had jogged him, as Lewis looked over his shoulder in the direction of the gossip. A dead and awkward silence ensued, ended at last by the pertinent observation that the "waiter was a long time bringing their lunch."

In a maze of angry doubt and incredulity as to the evidence of his senses and suspicions, Lewis finished his meal, and stalked out past the subdued and now voracious quartette, favoring them with a searching look as he went by, which they sustained with great meekness. All the afternoon a heavy load lay upon his heart, an indefinable dread he dared not analyze; a foreboding he would not face, yet could not dismiss.

"You are blue, Lewis," said Mr. Marlow, kindly, as they started uptown together. "This is the worst of having a wife and children; you miss them so terribly when they are away. But you will get used to it. Make up your mind at the eleventh hour to cross the water, and stay abroad three months. You will be surprised to find how easy your mind will become after a couple of weeks."

"I am satisfied, sir, without making personal trial of the matter, that men become inured to misery, which seemed in the beginning to be insupportable."

Mr. Marlow laughed, and they separated.

Lewis sighed as he looked up at the blinds of his house, shut fast and grim, and still more deeply as he admitted himself to the front hall, that echoed dismally the sound of the closing door. His next movement was to walk into the parlor, throw open a shutter, and let in the evening light upon the portraits of the dear absent ones. There he stood, scanning their faces—eyes and soul full of love and longing—until the mellow glow passed away and left them in darkness.

The comfortless evening repast was over, and he betook himself to the library, Sarah's favorite room, as it was also his. Her low easy-chair stood in its usual place opposite his at the center-table, but her workbasket was missing; likewise the book with its silver marker, that he was wont to see lying side by side with some volume he had selected for his own reading. But one lay there now, and there was an odd choking in his throat as he read the title on the back. He had expressed a wish for it in Sarah's hearing some days before, and her delicate forethought had left it here as a solace and keepsake, one that should, while reminding him of her, yet charm away sad feelings in her absence. Even in the exterior of the gift, she had been regardful of his taste. The binding was solid and rich; no gaudy coloring or tawdry gilt; the thick smooth paper and clear type were a luxury to touch and sight. Lewis was no sentimentalist in the ordinary acceptation of the term, yet he kissed the name his wife had traced upon the fly-leaf ere he sat down to employ the evening as she by her gift tacitly requested him to do. But it was a useless attempt. The book was not in fault, and he should have read it intently if only because she had bestowed it; still the hand that held it sank lower and lower, until it rested upon his knee, and the reader was the thinker instead.

The most prosaic of human beings have their seasons of reverie—pleasing or mournful, which are, unknown often to themselves, the poetry of their lives. Such was the drama Lewis Hammond was now rehearsing in his retrospective dreams.

The wan and weary mother, whom he remembered as always clothed in widow's weeds, and toiling in painful drudgery to maintain herself and her only boy; who had smiled and wept, rendered thanksgivings and uttered prayers for strength, alternately, as she heard Mr. Marlow's proposal to protect and help the lad through the world that had borne so hardly upon her; who had strained him to her bosom, and shed fast, hot tears of speechless anguish at their parting—a farewell that was never to be forgotten in any meeting on this side of eternity; this was the vision, hers the palladium of love, that had nerved him for the close wrestle with fortune, guarded him amid the burning ploughshares of temptation, carried him unscathed past the hundred mouths of hell, that gape upon the innocent and unwary in all large cities. Cold and unsusceptible as he was deemed in society, he kept unpolluted in his breast a fresh living stream of genuine romantic feeling, such as we are apt to think went out of fashion—aye, and out of being—with the belted knights of yore; wealth he had vowed never to squander, never reveal, until he should pour it, without one thought of self-reserve, upon his wife! He never hinted this to a living creature before the moment came for revealing it to the object of his choice. He was a "predestined old bachelor!" and "infidel to love and the sex," said and believed the gay and frivolous, and he let them talk. His ideal woman, his mother's representative and successor—the beauty and crown of his existence—was too sacred for the gaze and comment of indifferent worldlings. For her he labored and studied and lived; confident in a fatalistic belief that, at the right moment, the dream would become a reality—the phantasm leave her cloudy height for his arms.

Love so beautiful and intense as this, like snow in its purity, like fire in its fervor, cannot be won to full and eloquent utterance but by answering love—a sentiment identical in kind, if not equal in degree; and Sarah Hammond's estimate of her husband's affection was, in consequence of this want in herself, cruelly unjust in its coldness and poverty. His patience with her transient fits of gloom or waywardness in the early months of their married life; his noble forgetfulness of her faults, and grateful acknowledgment of her most trifling effort to please him; his unceasing care; his lavish bounty—all these she attributed too much to natural amiability and conscientious views of duty; too little to his warm regard for her personally. In this persuasion she had copied his conduct in externals so far as she could; and applauding observers adjudged the mock gem to be a fair and equitable equivalent for the rare pearl she had received.

Lest this digression, into which I have been inadvertently betrayed, should mislead any with the idea that I have some design of dignifying into a hero this respectable, but very commonplace personage, return we to him as he hears eleven o'clock rung out by the monitor on the mantel, and says to himself, "Baby Belle has been asleep these three hours, and mamma, caring nothing for beaux and ball-room, is preparing to follow her."

Beaux and ball-room! Pshaw! why should the nonsensical talk of that jackanapes, George Bond, come to his mind just then? The whole tenor of the remarks that succeeded the name that he imagined was his disproved that imagination. But who had left his wife at Newport in the care of a "good-looking" brother-in-law? who had been domesticated in the family of the deluded husband for a fortnight?

Pshaw again! What concern had he with that scandalous, doubtless slanderous tattle?

"Why did you not marry her when you had the opportunity? She was willing enough!"

Could Lucy have spoken thus of her sister? Sarah was barely acquainted with Philip Benson when Lucy wedded him, having met him but once prior to the wedding day at the house of her aunt in the country, from which place his own letter, penned by her father's sick-bed, recalled her. How far from his thoughts then was the rapid train of consequences that followed upon this preliminary act of their intercourse!

Did that scoundrel Bond say "Hammond"? It was not a common name, and came quite distinctly to his ears in the high, unpleasant key he so disliked. A flush of honest shame arose to his forehead at this uncontrollable straying of his ideas to a topic so disagreeable, and so often rejected by his mind.

"As if—even had I been the person insulted by his pity—I would believe one syllable he said of a woman as far above him in virtue and intellect, in everything good and lovable, as the heavens are above the earth! I would despise myself as much as I do him if I could lend my ear for an instant to so degrading a whisper! I wish I had faced him and demanded the whole tale; yet no! that would have been rash and absurd. Better as it is! By to-morrow I shall laugh at my ridiculous fancies!"

"Scratch! scratch! scratch!" The house was so still in the approaching midnight that the slight noise caused him a shock and quiver in the excited state of his nerves. The interruption was something between a scrape and a rap, three times repeated, and proceeding, apparently, from the bookcase at his right. What could it be? He had never seen or heard of a mouse on the premises, nor did the sound much resemble the nibbling of that animal. Ashamed of the momentary thrill he had experienced, he remained still and collected, awaiting its repetition.

"Scratch! scratch! rap!" It was in the bookcase—in the lower part where were drawers shut in by solid doors. These he had never explored, but knew that his wife kept pamphlets and papers in them. He opened the outer doors cautiously, and listened again, until assured by the scratching that his search was in the right direction. There were three drawers—two deep, the third and upper shallow. This he drew out and examined. It contained writing-paper and envelopes, all in good order. Nor was there any sign of the intruder amongst the loose music and periodicals in the second. The lower one was locked—no doubt accidentally, for he had never seen Sarah lock up anything except jewels and money. Their servants were honest, and she had no cause to fear investigation on his part.

Feeling, rather than arguing thus, he removed the drawer above, leaving exposed the locked one, and thrust his hand down into it. It encountered the polished surface of a small box or case, which he was in the act of drawing through the aperture left by the second drawer, when something dark and swift ran over his hand and up his sleeve. With a violent start, he dashed the casket to the floor, and another energetic fling of his arm dislodged the mouse. His first care was to pursue and kill it; his next to examine into the damage it had indirectly produced. The box—ebony, lined with sandal-wood—had fallen with such force as to loosen the spring, and lay on its side wide open; its treasures strewed over the carpet. They were neither numerous, nor in themselves valuable. A bouquet of dried flowers, enveloped in silver paper, lay nearest Lewis' hand, as he knelt to pick up the scattered articles. The paper was tied about the stalks of the flowers with black ribbon, and to this was attached a card: "Will Miss Sarah accept this trifling token of regard from one who is her stanch friend, and hopes, in time, to have a nearer claim upon her esteem?"

The hand was familiar to the reader as Philip Benson's. Why should Sarah preserve this, while the many floral tokens of his love which she had received were flung away when withered like worthless weeds? The pang of jealousy was new—sharp as the death-wrench to the heart-strings, cruel as the grave! The card was without date, or he would have read, with a different apprehension of its meaning, the harmless clause—"And hopes in time to have a nearer claim upon her esteem." There was a time, then, when, as Lucy had taunted her husband, he might have married her sister! when Sarah loved him, and had reason to think herself beloved in return! What was this sable badge but the insignia of a bereaved heart, that mourned still in secret the faithlessness of her early love, or the adverse fate that had sundered him from her, and given him to another?

Crushing the frail, dead stems in his hand, he threw them back into the box, and took up a bit of dark gray wood, rough on one side—smoothed on the other into a rude tablet. "Philip Benson, Deal Beach, July 27th, 1856. Pensez a moi!" But ten days before he met her at the wharf in New York to take her to her sick father! but three months before she plighted her troth to him, promised to wed him, while in spirit she was still weeping tears of blood over the inconstant! for he did not forget that Philip's engagement to Lucy preceded his own to Sarah by eight or nine weeks. There were other relics in the box; a half-worn glove, retaining the shape of the manly hand it had inclosed—which, he learned afterwards, Philip had left in his chamber at the farm-house when he departed to seek gayer scenes; a white shell, upon whose rosy lining were scratched with the point of a knife the ominous initials, "P. B." and beneath them "S. B. H.," a faded rosebud, and several printed slips, cut from the columns of newspapers. He unfolded but two of these.

One was an extract from Tennyson's "Maud"—the invitation to the garden. Breathlessly, by reason of the terrible stricture tightening around his heart, Lewis ran his eyes over the charming whimsical morceau. They rested upon and reviewed the last verse:

He did not discriminate now between printed and written verses. These were love stanzas sent by another man to his wife, received and cherished by her, hidden away with a care that, in itself, bordered on criminality, for was not its object the deception of the injured husband? The most passionate autograph love-letter could hardly have stabbed him more keenly.

The other was Mrs. Browning's exquisite "Portrait."

And here the reader can have an explanation the tortured man could not obtain. With the acumen for which Cupid's votaries are proverbial, Philip Benson, then at the "summer heat" degree of his flame for the Saratoga belle, had recognized in this poem the most correct and beautiful description of his lady-love. Curiosity to see if the resemblance were apparent to other eyes, and a desire for sympathy tempted him to forward it to Sarah. She must perceive the likeness to her divine sister, and surmise the sentiment that had induced him to send it. A little alteration in the opening stanza was requisite to make it a "perfect fit." Thus it was when the change was made:

The poetess, guiltless of any intention to cater for the wants of grown-up lovers, had written "Ten" in the space made blank by Philip's gallantry and real ignorance of his charmer's age. For the rest, the "lily-clear face," the "forehead fair and saintly," the "trail of golden hair," the blue eyes, "like meek prayers before a shrine," the voice that

were, we may safely assert, quite as much like poor Sarah, when he sent the poem, as they were now like the portrait he would—if put upon his oath—sketch of his unidealized Lucy.

It was not unnatural then, in Lewis Hammond, to overlook in his present state, these glaring discrepancies in the picture as applied by him. With a blanched and rigid countenance he put all the things back in the box, shut it, and restored it to its place. Then he knelt on the floor and hid his face in his wife's chair; and there struggled out into the still air of the desecrated hometemple, made sacred by his love and her abiding, deep sobs from the strong man's stricken heart—a grief as much more fearful than that of widowhood, as the desertion and dishonor of the loved one are worse than death.

CHAPTER XV.

It was the "grand hop" night at the headquarters of Newport fashion. Sarah, characteristically indifferent to gaieties "made to order," had determined not to appear below. The air of her room was fresh and pure, and a book, yet unread, lay under the lamp upon her table. Her sister and mother had withdrawn to dress, when Jeannie's curly head peeped in at Mrs. Hammond's door. Her features wore a most woe-begone expression.

"What has gone wrong, Jeannie?" inquired Sarah.

"Why, mamma says that I will be in her way if I go into the ball-room; and it will be so stupid to stay out the whole evening, while all the other girls can see the dancing and dresses, and hear the music. And sister Lucy says that children are 'bores' in company."

"A sad state of affairs, certainly! Perhaps I may persuade mother to let you go."

"Yes; but if she does, she will sit close against the wall with a lot of other fat old ladies, and they will talk over my head, and squeeze me almost to death, besides rumpling my dress; and I so want to wear my tucked pink grenadine, sister!"

"And you would like to have me to go down with you; is that it?"

Jeannie's eyes beamed delightedly. "Oh, if you only would!"

Sarah looked down into the eager face and saw, in anticipation, her own little Belle imploring some boon, as important to her, as easy to be granted by another as this, and consented with a kiss.

"Run away and bring your finery here! Mother is too busy to attend to you. Mary can dress you."

The order was obeyed with lightning speed; and Sarah, still holding in the excited child the foreshadowing of her darling's girlhood, superintended the toilet, while she made herself ready.

"What shall I wear, Jeannie?" she asked carelessly, holding open the door of her wardrobe.

"Oh, that lovely fawn-colored silk, please! the one with the black lace flounces! It is the prettiest color I ever saw; and I heard Mrs. Greyling tell another lady the night you wore it, when brother Lewis was here, you know, that it was one of the richest dresses in the room, modest as it looked, and that the flounce must have cost a penny!"

"Probably more!"

Sarah proceeded to array herself in the fortunate robe that had won the praises of the fashionably distinguished Mrs. Greyling. Her abundant dark hair was lighted by two coral sprigs, which formed the heads of her hair-pins, and, handkerchief and gloves in hand, she was taking a last survey of Jeannie's more brilliant costume, when there came a knock at the door.

"Mr. Benson!" said Mary, unclosing it.

"May I come in?" he asked.

The tidy Mary had removed all trace of the recent tiring operations from the apartment, which was a compound of parlor and dressing-room, a necessary adjunct to the small chamber and smaller nursery, leading out of it, at the side and rear.

"You may!" replied Sarah. "Here is an aspirant for ball-room honors, who awaits your approval."

"Mademoiselle, que vous etes charmante! I am penetrated with profound admiration!" exclaimed the teasing brother-in-law, raising his hands in true melodramatic style.

Jeannie laughed and blushed until her cheeks matched the grenadine.

"Mrs. Hunt told me that you had changed your mind, and intended to grace the festive scene with your presence," continued Philip, addressing Sarah. "She and Lucy are there, and the dancing has begun. I came to escort you and our fair debutante here—that is, unless some one else has offered his services and been accepted."

"That is not likely, since Mr. Hammond left us in your care. Do not your fourfold duties oppress you?"

"Not in the least. If all my charges were as chary of their calls upon me as you are, my time would hang heavily upon my hands. No one would imagine, from your reluctance to be waited upon, that you had been spoiled at home. If Mr. Hammond were here now, he would tell you to draw that shawl"—

"It is an opera cloak!" interrupted Jeannie.

"A ball-cloak to-night, then, is it not? I was saying that, although the night is not cool for sea air, you had better wrap that mantle about your chest and throat as we go out."

Just outside the door a waiter passed them with a note in his hand. He stopped, on seeing Philip.

"Mr. Benson! I was on my way to your rooms with this, sir."

Philip stepped back within the parlor to read it by the light. It was a line from a friend who had just arrived at another hotel notifying him of this fact. It required no reply, and, leaving it upon the table, he rejoined his companions.

"See mamma! Isn't it just as I said?" whispered Jeannie, as she established herself beside her sister in a comfortable corner that commanded a view of the spacious hall and its gay, restless sea of figures.

Sarah smiled at discovering her mother sandwiched between two portly dowagers; one in purple, the other in lavender silk; all three bobbing and waving in their earnest confabulations, in a style that presented a ludicrously marked resemblance to the gesticulations of a group of Muscovy ducks, on the margin of a mud-puddle, held by them in their capacity of a joint-stock company.

"I see that Lucy has taken the floor," observed Philip. "She will not thank me for any devoirs I could render her for the next three hours. If they get up anything so humble as quadrilles, may I ask the pleasure of your company for the set?"

"If you wish it—and my dress is not too grave in hue"—

"And too decorous in its make, you were about to add, I presume;" he finished the sentence bluntly. "It forms a refreshing contrast to the prevailing style around us."

Lucy here flitted into sight, and her very bare arms and shoulders pointed her husband's strictures. A stool, brought into the room for the use of some child or invalid looker-on of the festivities, now stood empty under Sarah's chair, and Philip, espying it, seized upon and drew it forth. When seated, his mouth was nearly on a level with Sarah's ear.

"This is pleasant!" he said. "We are quite as much isolated from the rest of mankind as if we were sitting among the heathery hillocks on Deal Beach. You do not love the visions of those tranquil sunny days as I do. You never allude to them voluntarily. Yet you have had less to convert your dreams into every-day actualities, tedious and prosaic, than I have. I stand in direful need of one of the old lectures, inculcating more charity, and less study of complex motives and biassed tendencies in the machine we call Man. Begin! I am at your mercy."

"I have forgotten how to deliver them. I am out of practice."

"That is not surprising. Your husband is behind the age he lives in—and so are you. You two would make Barnum's fortune, could he ever persuade the public of your idiosyncrasies."

"What are you talking about?"

"Look around and through this room, and you will understand one part of my meaning. Do you remark the preponderance of married over single belles? and that the most tenderly deferential cavaliers are husbands, and not dancing with their wives? I could point out to you three men, leaders of the ton in this extremely reputable, eminently moral assembly, who, it is whispered among the knowing ones, are married, and, having left their domestic associations for a season of recreation, boldly attach themselves to certain stylish young ladies here, and challenge observation, defy public censure, by their marked and increasing devotion. I meet them strolling along the beach in the morning; riding together in the afternoon; and when not engaged in this evening exhibition of toilet and muscle, you will find them pacing the moon or star-lit piazza, or, perchance, again sentimentalizing on the shore until the witching hour draws near."

"You surprise me!"

"You have no right to be surprised. You have the same thing continually before you in your city. Every fashionable hotel or boarding-house can supply you with such flirtations by the dozen. A married woman who declines the polite services of all gentlemen, except her husband and near relatives, is a prude, with false scruples of propriety and delicacy. Let her legal partner complain—he is cried out upon as a despot, and you can trust the sweet angel of an abused wife to elude his vigilance—violence, she terms it—for the future, without altering her conduct in aught else. Do you see that pretty woman in blue—the one with the madonna-like face? Her tyrant is here but once a week—from Saturday until Monday—then hies back to the business he loves as well as she does her pleasure. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and the forenoon of Saturday, any mustachioed puppy may walk, talk, drive, and flirt with her—bask in the rays of those liquid orbs. When the rightful lord appears, she is demure as a nun, patient as a saint, dutiful as Griselda, to him and him alone. Do you begin to understand why I congratulated you upon having a husband of the olden stamp? Why, I do from my heart felicitate my friend Hammond upon having gained, as a helpmeet, one of that nearly obsolete species—Woman!"

Sarah's embarrassment was painful and but indifferently concealed. She felt that it was barely excusable, in consideration of his fraternal relation to her, for Philip to speak so plainly of this social blemish; and altogether unpardonable, while he did not, or could not, prevent his wife's participation in the questionable gaieties he assailed so unsparingly. Reply she could not, without implicating Lucy in her reprobation, and he must perceive her difficulty. This was the trouble that lay uppermost. At her heart's core, the uneasy feeling she ever experienced in conversation with him; the stirring of the entombed love, of whose actual death she had horrible misgivings; the incongruous blending of past emotion with present duty, were now aggravated by the enforced acceptance of unmerited praise. Her woman's instinct, her experience as a wife, told her that the cause of the sinful recklessness, the contempt of the true spirit of the marriage tie, was not the fruit merely of the vanity and thirst for adulation, to which it was properly attributed. With the recollection of her own life, the education she had received at home, the hateful, yet even to her independent spirit, resistless decrees of society, there swelled up within her bosom something akin to Philip's bitter cynicism. Under this spur, she spoke.

"And from these signs of the times, you would argue an inherent degeneracy of womanhood—a radical change in its composition, such as some anatomists tell us has taken place in the structure of our bodies—our blood—our very teeth. A dentist, who filled a tooth for me the other day, imparted divers scientific items of information to me that may illustrate your position. 'Enamel, madam, is not what enamel was in the days of our ancestors!' he affirmed pathetically; 'the color, the very ingredients of the bone, the calcareous base of the teeth, differ sadly from the indestructible molars of fifty years ago.' At this passage of his jeremiade, he chanced to touch the nerve in the unhappy 'molar' he was excavating, and I am persuaded that I suffered as really as my grandmother would have done, had she sat in my place."

She paused, and beat time with her fingers on Jeannie's shoulder to the wild, varying waltz that swept the giddy crowd around the room in fast and flying circles.

"Your analogy asserts, then, that at heart women are alike in all ages?"

"Why not, as well as men?"

"Then why does not action remain the same, if that be true?"

"Because custom—fashion, if you prefer this name—an unaccountable, irresponsible power—owing its birth oftenest to accident or caprice, says, 'Do this!' and it is done! be it to perpetrate a cravat-bow, a marriage, or a murder!"

Another pause—in which music and dancers seemed sweeping on to sweet intoxication—so joyous in their abandon were the gushing strains; so swift the whirl of the living ring. The fingers played lightly and rapidly on Jeannie's plump shoulder—then rested on a half-beat.

"Yes!" She was looking towards the crowd, but her eye was fixed, and her accents slow and grave. "Hearts live and hearts love, while time endures. The heart selects its mate in life's springtime, with judgment as untaught as that of the silly bird that asks no companion but the one the God of Nature has bestowed upon it. But you see not, my good brother"—she faced him, a smile wreathing her lip—a strange glitter in her eye—"see you not to what woeful disorders these untrained desires, this unsophisticated following out of unregulated affections would give rise? It would sap the foundations of caste; level all wholesome distinctions of society; consign the accomplished daughters of palatial halls—hoary with a semi-decade of years—to one-story cottages and a maid-of-all work; doom nice young men to the drudgery of business for the remainder of their wretched lives, to maintain wives whose dowries would not keep their lily-handed lords in French kids for a year; cover managing mammas with ignominy, and hasten ambitious papas to their costly vaults in—as Dickens has it—'some genteel place of interment.' Come what may of blasted hopes and wrecked hearts, the decencies of life must be observed. Every heart has its nerve—genuine, sensitive, sometimes vulgarly tenacious of life—but there are corrosives that will eat it out; fine, deadly wires, that can probe and torture and extract it. And when the troublesome thing is finally gotten rid of, there is an end to all obstacles to judicious courtships and eligible alliances!" She laughed scornfully, and Philip recoiled, without knowing why he did so, as he heard her.

"That is all very well, when the nature of the contract is understood on both sides," he said, gloomily. "I doubt, however, whether the beautiful economy of your system will be appreciated by those whose living hearts are bound to the bloodless plaster-casts you describe."

"These accidents will occur in spite of caution on the part of the best managers of suitable marriages. By far the larger proportion of the shocks inflicted upon polite circles arise from this very cause. Pygmalion grows weary of wooing his statue, and wants sympathy in his disappointment and loneliness."

The dance was ended. The fantastic variations of the waltz were exchanged for a noble march—pealing through the heated rooms like a rush of the healthful sea-breeze. The spark died in Sarah's eye. Her voice took its habitual pitch.

"I have permitted myself to become excited, and, I am afraid, have said many things that I had no right to think—much less to utter. If my freedom has displeased you, I am sorry."

"The error—if error there were—was mine," rejoined Philip. "I led the conversation into the channel; you, after awhile, followed. I believe there is no danger of our misunderstanding each other."

"Darby and Joan! good children in the corner!" cried Lucy, flushed with exercise and radiant with good humor, as she promenaded past them leaning on the arm of a young West Pointer, a native Southerner and an acquaintance of Philip's. If his wife must flirt and frolic, he was watchful that she did not compromise him by association with doubtful characters. On several occasions, the advances of gay gentlemen, whose toilets were more nearly irreproachable than their reputations, had been checked by his cool and significant resumption of the husband's post beside the belle, and, if need existed, by the prompt withdrawal of the unwilling lady from the scene. The cadet laughed, and, convinced that she had said a witty thing, Lucy swam by.

"The common sense of our tropes, rodomontades, and allegories is this!" said Philip, biting his lip, and speaking in a hard tone. "The only safe ground in marriage is mutual, permanent affection. You meant to convey the idea that if each of these dressy matrons, humming around our ears, had a sincere, abiding love for her husband—and each of these gallant benedicts the right kind of regard for his wedded Beatrice, the vocation of us corner censors would be gone?"

"Well said, Mr. Interpreter!" she responded, in affected jest.

"This point settled, will you take my arm for a turn through the room before the next set is formed? They are talking of quadrilles. I shall claim your promise if a set is made up, unless you are not courageous enough to brave the public sneer by dancing with your brother. Come, Jeannie, and walk with us."

Two sets of quadrilles were arranged at different ends of the saloon. Philip led Sarah through one, with Lucy—who considered it a capital joke—and her partner vis-a-vis to them, Jeannie, meanwhile, remaining by her mother.

The summer nights were short; and, when the dance was over, Sarah intimated to her younger sister the propriety of retiring. Mrs. Hunt's head ached, and she esteemed the sacrifice comparatively light, therefore, that she, too, had to leave the revels and accompany the child to her chamber. Sarah's apartments were on the same floor, several doors further on. Having said "Good-night" to the others, she and Philip walked slowly along the piazza, light as day in the moonbeams, until they reached the outer room, the parlor.

"I hope you will experience no ill effects from your dissipation," said Philip, in playful irony. "In a lady of your staid habits, this disposition to gaiety is alarming. Absolutely eleven o'clock! What will Hammond say when he hears the story? Good-night! Don't let your conscience keep you awake!"

Sarah opened the door softly, that she might not startle the baby-sleeper in the inner room. The lamp was shining brightly, and by it sat—her husband!

CHAPTER XVI.

Lewis had entered his wife's room within fifteen minutes after she left it. He looked so ill and weary that the girl, Mary, gave a stifled scream of fright and surprise.

"Are you sick, sir?" she asked hastily, as he threw off his hat, and wiped his pale forehead. "Shall I tell Mrs. Hammond that you are here? She went down to the ball-room awhile ago."

"What did you say? No!" replied he, shortly.

His frown, rather than his tone, silenced her. He had picked up the envelope Philip had dropped on the table, and his face darkened still more. Too proud to question a servant of her mistress' actions and associates, he believed that he had gathered from this mute witness all that was needful to know. As a privileged habitue of the cosy boudoir he had been at such pain to procure and make fit for his wife's occupancy, another had sat here and read his evening mail, while awaiting her leisure; careless of appearances, since the deceived one would not be there to notice them, had tossed this note down with as much freedom as he would have done in his own apartment.

Through the open windows poured the distant strains of the band; and, seized by a sudden thought, he caught up his hat and strode out, along piazzas and through halls, to the entrance door of the ball saloon. As Sarah's ill-fortune ordained it, the piercing glance that ran over and beyond the crowd of spectators and dancers detected her at the instant of Philip's taking his lowly seat at her side. Jeannie's pink attire was concealed by the drapery of a lady, whose place in the set then forming was directly in front of her. Lewis saw but the two, virtually tete-a-tete; and, as he obtained fleeting glimpses of them through the shifting throng, marked Philip's energetic, yet confidential discourse, and the intentness with which she listened, until, warmed or excited by his theme, Sarah lifted her downcast eyes and spoke, with what feeling and effect her auditor's varying expression showed.

The gazer stood there like a statue, unheeding the surprised and questioning looks cast by passers-by upon his traveling-dress, streaked with dust—his sad and settled visage, so unbefitting the scene within—while Philip made the tour of the room, with Sarah upon his arm, until they took their stations for the dance; he, courteous and attentive—she, smiling and happy, more beautiful in her husband's eyes than her blonde sister opposite; and he could stay no longer. If Mary had thought him sick and cross at his former entrance, she considered him savage now, for one who was ordinarily a kind and gentle master.

"You can go to your room!" he ordered, not advised. "I will sit up for Mrs. Hammond!"

"I have slept in the nursery, sir, while you were away."

"That cannot be to-night. I will find you some other place."

He had no intention that the anticipated conversation with his wife should be overheard.

"I can stay with a friend of mine, sir, only a few doors off."

"Very well!"

Quickly and quietly the nurse arranged the night-lamp and the child's food, that her mistress might have no trouble during her absence, and went out.

Baby Belle slumbered on, happily wandering through the guileless mazes of baby dreamland; one little arm, bared from the sleeve of her gown, thrown above her head—the hand of the other cradling her cheek. The father ventured to press a light kiss upon the red lips. In his desolation, he craved this trifling solace. The child's face was contorted by an expression of discomfort, and, still dreaming, she murmured, in her inarticulate language, some pettish expression of disgust.

"My very child shrinks from me! It is in the blood!" said the unhappy man, drawing back from the crib.

If his resolution had waned at sight of the sleeper, it was fixed again when he returned to his chair in the outer room. He raised his head from his folded arms when he heard Philip and Sarah approaching, but did not otherwise alter his position. The low tone of their parting words—one soon learned by the sojourners in hotels and watering-places, where thin partitions and ventilators abound—was, to him, the cautiously repressed voice of affectionate good-nights. But one clause was distinct—"What will Hammond say, when he hears the story?" They jested thus of him, then. One of them, at least, should learn ere long what he would say.

"Lewis, you here!"

Sarah changed color with amazement and vague alarm—emotion that paralyzed her momentarily. Then, as she discerned the tokens of disorder in his dress and countenance, she hurried forward.

"What has brought you so unexpectedly? Are you sick? Has anything happened?"

He did not rise; and, resting her hand on his shoulder, she stooped for a kiss. But his stern gaze never moved from hers—anxious and inquiring—and his lips were like stone.

"Lewis, speak to me! If you have dreadful news to tell me, for pity's sake, do not keep me in suspense!"

"I have nothing to say that will be new to you," he said, without relaxing his hard, cold manner, "and not a great deal that ought to have been kept back from me when I wished to marry you, believing that you had a heart to give me with your hand."

As if struck in the face, Sarah sank back into a chair, speechless and trembling.

"Yes! had you been sincere with me then, grieved and disappointed as I would have felt, I would have respected you the more, and loved you none the less for the disclosure. But when, after a year and a half of married life, I learn that the woman I have loved and trusted with my whole soul—from whom I have never concealed a thought that it could interest her to know—has all the while been playing a false part—vowing at the altar to love me and me alone, when she secretly idolized another; bearing my name, living beneath my roof, sleeping in my bosom—yet thinking of, and caring for him, treasuring his keepsakes as the most precious of her possessions—is it strange that, when the tongue of a vulgar gossip proclaims my shame in my hearing, and other evidence proves what I thought was his vile slander to be true as gospel—is it strange, I say, that I am incensed at the deception practised upon me—at the infamous outrage of my dearest hopes—my most holy feelings?"

She threw herself at his feet, clasped his knees, and implored him, chokingly, to "forgive" her. "Oh! if you knew what I have suffered!"

"What you have suffered!" He folded his arms and looked sorrowfully down at her crouching figure. "Yes! you were not by nature coarse and unfeeling! The violence you have committed upon your heart and every principle of delicacy and truth must have cost you pain. Then you loved him!"

"Once! a long while ago!" said Sarah, hiding her face in her hands.

"Take care!" There was no softness now in his tone. "Remember that I have seen you together day by day, and that glances and actions, unnoticed at the time in my stupid blindness, recur to me now with terrible meaning. For once, speak the true voice of feeling, and own what I know already, that all the love you ever had to give belongs still to your sister's husband!"

"I will speak the truth!" Sarah arose and stood before him—face livid and eyes burning. "I did love this man! I married you, partly to please my parents, partly because I found out that by some means my secret had fallen into unscrupulous hands, and I was mad with dread of its exposure! It seemed to me that no worse shame could come upon me than to have it trumpeted abroad that I had bestowed my love unsought, and was ready to die because it was slighted. I have learned since that it is far, far worse to live a lie—to despise myself! Oh! that I had died then!" She battled with the emotion that threatened to overwhelm her and went on. "Once bound to you, it has been my hourly endeavor to feel and act as became the faithful wife of a kind, noble man. If, sometimes, I have erred in thought—if my feelings have failed me in the moment of trial—yet, in word and deed, in look and gesture, I have been true to you. No one have I deceived more thoroughly than Philip Benson. He never suspected my unfortunate partiality for himself; he believes me still, what I would give worlds to become in truth, your loyal, loving wife! It is well that you know the truth at last. I do not ask you how you have obtained the outlines of a disgraceful story, that I have tried a thousand times to tell you, but was prevented by the fear of losing your favour forever. This is my poor defence—not against your charges, but in palliation of the sin of which they justly accuse me. I can say nothing more. Do with me as you will!"

"It is but just to myself that you should hear the circumstances which accidentally revealed this matter to me."

He narrated the scene at the restaurant, and the discovery of the evening. He evinced neither relenting nor sympathy in the recital. Her confession had extinguished the last ray of hope, cherished, though unacknowledged by himself, that she might extenuate her error or give a more favorable construction to the evidence against her. It was not singular that, in the reaction of disappointment, he was ready to believe that he had not heard all; to imagine that he could perceive throughout her statement a disposition to screen Philip, that was, in itself, a proof of disingenuousness, if not deliberate falsehood. She denied that he had ever been aware of her attachment or had reciprocated it. What meant then those words—"hopes in time to have a nearer claim?" What those impassioned verses? What the linking of their initials within the shell? the motto on the wooden tablet? While these subtle queries were insinuated into his soul by some mocking spirit, he concluded the history of the discovery of the casket.

"I have never opened it since the night before I was married," said Sarah, with no haste of self-justification. "I put it into the drawer the day after we went to our house. It has not been unlocked from that day to this."

"Why keep it at all, unless as a memento of one still dear to you?"

"I felt as if I had buried it. I said to myself: 'If the time ever comes when I can disinter these relics and show them to my husband, without a pang or fear, as mementoes of a dead and almost forgotten folly, he shall destroy them, and I shall have gained a victory that will insure my lifelong happiness.'"

"And that time has never arrived."

She would have spoken, but her tongue proved traitorous. She crimsoned and was silent.

Lewis smiled drearily. "You see that I know you better than you do yourself. It is well, as you have said, that I know all at last. I pity you! If I could, I would release you from your bondage. As it is, I will do all that I can for this end."

"Never!" cried Sarah, shuddering. "Have you forgotten our child?"

"I have not!" His voice shook for a second. "She is all that unites us now. For the sake of her future—her good name—an open separation ought to be avoided, if possible—if it be inevitable, your conduct must not be the ostensible cause. To quiet malicious tongues, you must remain here awhile longer under your mother's care. To accomplish the same end, I must appear once more in public, and on apparently friendly terms with—your brother-in-law. When your mother returns to the city, you had best go, too, and to your own house. Your brother Robert is now sixteen years old—steady and manly enough to act as your protector. Invite him to stay with you, and also Jeannie, if you find it lonely."

"What are you saying? Where will you be that you speak of my choosing another protector?"

"A very important one I have proved myself to be!" he returned, with the same sad smile. "I have not been able to shield you from invidious reports; still less to save you from yourself. I sail for Europe day after to-morrow."

"Lewis, you will not! If you ever loved me, do not desert me and our child now! I will submit to any punishment but this!" She clung anew to his knees as she poured out her prayer.

Not a month ago she had turned pale with fright at the suggestion of this voyage. It was sheer acting then! why not now?

"Objections are useless!" he said. "My arrangements are made. I have passed my word."

"But you will not leave me in anger! Say that you will forgive me! that you will return soon, and this miserable night be forgotten!"

"Shall I tell you when I will return?" He raised her head, and looked straight into her eyes. "When you write to me, and tell me that you have destroyed the love-tokens in that box; when you bid me come back for your sake—not for our child's! Until then, I shall believe that my presence would be irksome to you. It is necessary for our house to have a resident partner in England. It is my expectation to fill that place for some time to come; it shall be for you to say how long."

Bowed as Sarah's spirit was beneath the burst of the long-dreaded storm and her accusing conscience, her womanly pride revolted at this speech. She had humbled herself in the dust at the feet of a man whom she did not love; had borne meekly his reproaches; submitted dumbly to the degrading suspicions that far transcended her actual sin; but as the idea of her suing servilely for the love she had never yet valued; of him, indifferent and independent, awaiting afar off for her petition—hers, whom he had abandoned to the scornful sneers of the keen-witted hyenas of society; to the cross-examination of her distrustful relatives; the stings of remorse; left in one word to herself!—as this picture grew up clearly before her mind, the tide of feeling turned.

"You reject my prayers and despise my tears!" she said proudly. "You refuse to accept of my humiliation. Yet you do not doubt me, as you would have me believe that you do! Else you would not dare to trust me—the keeper of your honor and your child's fair name—out of your sight! I throw back the charge in your teeth, and tell you that your conduct gives it the lie! I have asked you—shame on me that I did!—to continue to me the shelter of your name and presence; to shield me, a helpless woman, more unhappy than guilty, from the ban of the world; and you deny me everything but a contemptible shadow of respectability, which the veriest fool can penetrate. I would not have you suppose that your generous confidence in my integrity"—she brought out the words with scathing contempt—"will deter me from sinking to the level you are pleased to assign me. If the native dignity of my womanhood, the principles I inherit from my father, my love for my innocent babe do not hold me back from ruin, be assured that the hope of winning your approval will not. To you I make no pledges of reformation; I offer but one promise. If you choose to remain abroad until I, in spirit, kiss your feet, and pray you to receive a love such as most men are glad to win by assiduity of attention, and every pleasing art—which you would force into being by wilful and revengeful absence—you will never see your native land again until the grass grows upon my grave!"

She paused for breath, and continued more slowly. "While your child lives, and I remain her guardian, I will use your means for her maintenance—will reside in your house. If she dies, or you take her from me, I will not owe you my support for a single day more!"

Lewis grew pallid to his lips; but he, too, was proud, and his stubborn will was called into bold exercise.

"Very well! It is in your choice to accede to my propositions, or not. A share in all that I have is yours; not only during the child's life, but as long as you live. Before I leave America, I shall deposit for you in your father's bank a sum which, I hope, you will find sufficient to maintain you in comfort. Your father will be my executor in this matter. I shall not confide to him the peculiar circumstances of my departure, leaving you at liberty to act in this respect, as in everything else, according to the dictates of your will and pleasure. At the end of a certain term of years specified by law, you can, if you wish, procure a divorce; on the ground of my wilful and continued desertion of you; in which case, the provision for your support will remain unchanged. As to the child—the mother's is the strongest claim. I shall never take her from you. Do not let me keep you up longer. It is late!"

With a silent inclination of the head, she withdrew, and he cast himself upon the sofa, there to lie during the few hours of the night that were yet unspent.

He had arisen, and was standing at the window when Sarah entered in the morning. But for the dark shadows under the eyes, and the tight-drawn look about the mouth, she appeared as usual; and her "Good-morning," if cold, was yet polite.

"I imagine," she said, as the gong clashed out its second call, "that you wish me to accompany you to breakfast, and to preserve my ordinary manner towards you when others are by. Am I right?"

"You are. This is all I ask. The effort will not be a tedious one. I leave here at noon."

Arm in arm they directed their steps towards the great dining-hall—to the view of the spectator as comfortable and happy a pair as any that pursued that route on that summer morning. Together they sat down at table, and Mr. Hammond ordered "his lady's" breakfast with his own. Mrs. Hunt bustled in shortly after they were seated, full of wonderment at having heard from Sarah's maid of her master's unexpected arrival; while Jeannie gave his hand a squeeze as hearty as was the welcome in her smiling face. The Bensons were always late. So much the better. There were more people present to observe the cordial meeting between the brothers-in-law, made the more conspicuous by Philip's surprise. The genuineness of his good spirits, his easy, unembarrassed manner, was the best veil that could have been devised for Sarah's constraint and Lewis' counterfeit composure.

It did not escape Philip's eye that Sarah ate nothing, and spoke only to avoid the appearance of singularity; and he believed that he had discovered the origin of her trouble when Lewis communicated his purpose of foreign travel. When the burst of surprise subsided, the latter tried successfully to represent his plan as a business necessity. Lucy, who never saw an inch beyond her nose—morally and mentally speaking—except when her intuitions were quickened by self-love, was the questioner most to be dreaded.

"Why don't you go with him?" she inquired of her sister. "He should not stir one step without me, if I were in your place. Only think! you might spend six months in Paris!"

"How would Baby Belle relish a sea voyage!" returned Sarah.

"Nonsense! How supremely silly! One would suppose that she was the only member of the family whose comfort was to be consulted. Rather than expose her to the possibility of inconvenience, you will deprive yourself of profit and pleasure, and be separated from your husband for nobody knows how long. This shows how much these model married people really care for one another. When put to the test they are no better than we poor sinners, whom everybody calls flirts. Phil, are those muffins warm? This one of mine has grown cold while I was talking."

"How are the horses, Benson?" inquired Lewis. "Have they been exercised regularly?"

"Yes, and are in capital order. You could have left us no more acceptable reminder of yourself than those same fine bays."

"If you have no other engagement, suppose we have them up before the light carriage after breakfast, and take a short drive."

"Agreed, with all my heart! unless Mrs. Hammond quarrels with me for robbing her of a portion of your last morning with her."

"She will forgive you!" Lewis rejoined, to spare her the effort of reply.

From her window Sarah saw them whirl off along the beach in sight of the hundreds of spectators on the sands and about the hotels, and recognized the ingenuity of this scheme for proclaiming the amicable feeling between the two.

"But one more scene, and the hateful mockery is over!" thought the wife, as she heard her husband's step outside the door on his return.

She snatched a paper from the table, and seemed absorbed in its contents, not looking up at his entrance. Lewis made several turns through the room, sighed heavily, and once paused, as if about to address her, but changed his mind.

Then sounded from without the fresh, gurgling laugh of a child, and the nurse came in with the baby—rosy and bright—from her morning walk on the shore. She almost sprang from Mary's hold at sight of her father, and dismissing the woman with a word, he took his darling into his arms and sat down behind his wife. Inflexibly sullen, Sarah tried not to listen, as she would not see them; but she heard every sound: the child's soft coo of satisfaction as she nestled in the father's bosom; the many kisses he imprinted upon her pure face and mouth with what agony Sarah well knew—the irregular respiration, sometimes repressed, until its breaking forth was like sobs; and the proud, miserable heart confessed reluctantly that, in one respect, his share of their divided lot was heavier than hers. She was not to witness his final resignation of his idol. Under color of summoning Mary, he carried the infant from the room, and came back without her.

"It is time for me to go now, Sarah!"

His voice was calm, and its firmness destroyed what slender encouragement she might have drawn from the scene with his child, to hope for some modification of his resolution.

"Will you write to me, at regular intervals, to give me news of Belle?"

"Certainly, if such is your wish."

"And yourself? you will be careful of your health, will you not? And if I can ever serve you in any way, you will let me know?"

"It is not likely that you can; thank you."

There was a silence of some moments. Sarah stood playing with the tassel of her morning robe, pale and composed.

"Sarah!" Lewis took her hand. "We have both been hasty, both violent! Unfeeling as you think me, and as I may have seemed in this affair, believe me that it almost kills me to part from you so coldly. It is not like me to retract a determination, but if you will say now what you did last night—'Do not go!' I will stay, and be as good a husband to you as I can. Shall we not forgive, and try to forget?"

The demon of resentful pride was not so easily exorcised. At a breath of repentance—a suggestion of compromise, the fell legion rallied an impregnable phalanx. She was frozen, relentless; her eyes, black and haughty, met his with an answer her tongue could not have framed in words.

"I have nothing to say!"

"'Nothing!' The ocean must then separate us for years—it may be forever!"

"It was your choice. I will not reverse it."

"Not if you knew that if you let me go I would never return?"

"Not if I knew that you would never return!"

Without another word, without a farewell look, or the hand-grasp mere strangers exchange, he left her there—the stony monument of her ill-directed life and affections; the victim of a worldly mother and a backbiting tongue!