though every evening found the hope
of the morning withered and dead. To-day I rose with a heavier heart
than ever, and only determined to join the hunting party because I said
to myself: 'sometime your horse will have more sense than you have
courage, and will throw you off and break your neck.' And then I saw
you--or your ghost, as I at first thought--standing among the people
who have acted as mutes in the farce of my life; then I at last felt
that for which I have always longed, a joy, a great, strong, real
joy--only at first it was too strong and overcame me. I'm entirely out
of practice in being happy."

"My poor friend," paid Edwin deeply agitated, "you will, you must get
into practice again. How happy I should be, if I could only succeed in
reconciling you to your life? True, I'm still too much of a stranger
here to fully understand the circumstances in which you are placed; but
my short acquaintance with your husband has disclosed nothing which
should make your estrangement irreconcilable. You know, and even the
greatest stranger must see, what a deep grief it is to him that he has
lost you, though you are his wife. He seems--whatever else he may
lack--to be a gentleman, whom only the false and shallow education of
his class has prevented from making something more of himself. I should
think, if you only desired it that for a fond glance, a kind word from
you he would do the most unprecedented things. Can you blame him for
surrounding himself with such society, if you deny him yours? Perhaps
the very bitterness that has come between you, has served to sink him
into a still lower depth. Now you've only to give him your little
finger, and I think you could lead him a long distance up the heights,
so high that these 'mutes' could not climb after you."

"Are you in earnest?" she asked looking quietly at him. "But why
shouldn't you believe all this. You've not lived with this man. Did I
know, myself, four years ago, that nothing is more hopeless than what
you call a gentleman? To be sure, in your sense, as you and your
friends are--where the inability to do anything unworthy arises from
your nature and the honest desire not to mar humanity--! But where the
point in question is only not to offend his consciousness of rank--oh!
my dear friend, I could tell you something that would arouse your
indignation, and yet to do it was not derogatory to the honor of a
certain 'gentleman.' No, no, it's very noble in you to pers