was only an hour after
dinner: I knew he would find it very dull to sit alone all the evening;
and this considerably softened my resentment, though it did not make me
relent. I was determined to show him that my heart was not his slave,
and I could live without him if I chose; and I sat down and wrote a long
letter to my aunt, of course telling her nothing of all this. Soon after
ten o'clock I heard him come up again, but he passed my door and went
straight to his own dressing-room, where he shut himself in for the
night.

I was rather anxious to see how he would meet me in the morning, and not
a little disappointed to behold him enter the breakfast-room with a
careless smile.

'Are you cross still, Helen?' said he, approaching as if to salute me. I
coldly turned to the table, and began to pour out the coffee, observing
that he was rather late.

He uttered a low whistle and sauntered away to the window, where he stood
for some minutes looking out upon the pleasing prospect of sullen grey
clouds, streaming rain, soaking lawn, and dripping leafless trees, and
muttering execrations on the weather, and then sat down to breakfast.
While taking his coffee he muttered it was 'd--d cold.'

'You should not have left it so long,' said I.

He made no answer, and the meal was concluded in silence. It was a
relief to both when the letter-bag was brought in. It contained upon
examination a newspaper and one or two letters for him, and a couple of
letters for me, which he tossed across the table without a remark. One
was from my brother, the other from Milicent Hargrave, who is now in
London with her mother. His, I think, were business letters, and
apparently not much to his mind, for he crushed them into his pocket with
some muttered expletives that I should have reproved him for at any other
time. The paper he set before him, and pretended to be deeply absorbed
in its contents during the remainder of breakfast, and a considerable
time after.

The reading and answering of my letters, and the direction of household
concerns, afforded me ample employment for the morning: after lunch I got
my drawing, and from dinner till bed-time I read. Meanwhile, poor Arthur
was sadly at a loss for something to amuse him or to occupy his time. He
wanted to appear as busy and as unconcerned as I did. Had the weather at
all permitted, he would doubtless have ordered his horse and set off to
some distant region, no matter where, immedi