ny courteous
invitation extended by the family to pass a part of the evening with
them; but, seeing how troubled Mrs. Markland was at the absence of
her husband, he thought it better to decline entering the house, and
wait for a better opportunity to make their more intimate
acquaintance. So he bade her a good evening, after answering what
further inquiries she wished to make, and returned to his own home.

Aunt Grace was unusually excited by the information received through
their neighbour, and fretted and talked in her excited way for some
time; but nothing that she said elicited any reply from Mrs.
Markland, who seemed half stupefied, and sat through the evening in
a state of deep abstraction, answering only in brief sentences any
remarks addressed to her. It seemed to her as if her feet had
wandered somehow into the mazes of a labyrinth, from which at each
effort to get free she was only the more inextricably involved. Her
perceptions had lost their clearness, and, still worse, her
confidence in them was diminishing. Heretofore she had reposed all
trust in her husband's rational intelligence; and her woman's nature
had leaned upon him and clung to him as the vine to the oak. As his
judgment determined, her intuitions had approved. Alas for her that
this was no longer! Hitherto she had walked by his side with a clear
light upon their path. She was ready to walk on still, and to walk
bravely so far as herself was concerned, even though her straining
eyes could not penetrate the cloudy veil that made all before her
darkness and mystery.

Fanny, who had looked forward with a vague fear to her father's
return on that evening, felt relieved on hearing that he had gone to
New York, for that would give sufficient time for him to receive a
letter from Mr. Lyon.

Thus it was with the family of Mr. Markland on this particular
occasion. A crisis, looked for with trembling anxiety, seemed just
at, hand; and yet it was still deferred--leaving, at least in one
bosom, a heart-sickness that made life itself almost a burden.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE close of the next day did not bring Mr. Markland, but only a
hurried letter, saying that important business would probably keep
him in New York a day or two longer. A postscript to the letter read
thus:

"Mr. Elbridge will send you a deed of some warehouse property that I
have sold. Sign and return it by the bearer."

If Mr. Markland had only said where a letter would re