prompt answer of Ellis; and the
words were uttered with more feeling than he had intended to exhibit.
The very question brought unpleasant images before his mind.

"I shall look for you," said the friend, whose name was Jerome. "Good
evening!"

"Good evening! Say to your friends, if I should not be there, that I am
in better company."

The two men parted, and Ellis kept on his way homeward. Not until the
suggestion of Jerome that his wife might be disinclined to hear him
read, did a remembrance of Cara's uncertain temper throw a shade across
his feelings. He sighed as he moved onward.

"I wish she were kinder and more considerate," he said to himself. "I
know that I don't always do right; yet, I am not by any means so bad as
she sometimes makes me out. To any thing reasonable, I am always ready
to yield. But when she frowns if I light a cigar; and calls me a
tippler whenever she detects the smell of brandy and water, I grow
angry and stubborn. Ah, me!"

Ellis sighed heavily. A little way he walked on, and then began
communing with himself.

"I don't know"--he went on--"but, may be, I do take a little too much
sometimes. I rather think I must have been drinking too freely when I
came home last week: by the way Cara talked, and by the way she acted
for two or three days afterwards. There may be danger. Perhaps there
is. My head isn't very strong; and it doesn't take much to affect me. I
wish Cara wouldn't speak to me as she does sometimes. I can't bear it.
Twice within the last month, she has fairly driven me off to spend my
evening in a tavern, when I would much rather have been at home. Ah,
me! It's a great mistake. And Cara may find it out, some day, to her
sorrow. I like a glass of brandy, now and then; but I'm not quite so
far gone that I must have it whether or no. I'm foolish, I will own, to
mind her little, pettish, fretful humours. I ought to be more of a man
than I am. But, I didn't make myself, and can't help feeling annoyed,
and sometimes angry, when she is unkind and unreasonable. Going off to
a tavern don't mend the matter, I'll admit; but, when I leave the
house, alone, after nightfall, and in a bad humour, it is the most
natural thing in the world for me to seek the pleasant company of some
of my old friends--and I generally know where to find them."

Such was the state of mind in which Ellis returned home.

A word or two will give the reader a better idea of the relation which
Henry Ellis and h