dmit, and asked how long they had been
married. He flushed violently, and with a sudden rage that at once
robbed him of that gentlemanly appearance which, in him, was but the
veneer to a coarse and brutal nature, he exclaimed:

"---- you! and by what right do you ask that?"

But before I could reply he recovered himself and was all false polish
again, bowing with exaggerated politeness, as he exclaimed:

"Excuse me; I have had much to disturb me lately. My wife's health has
been very feeble for months, and I am worn out with anxiety and
watching. We are now on our way to a warmer climate, where I hope she
will be quite restored."

And he smiled a very strange and peculiar smile, that went out like a
suddenly extinguished candle, as he perceived her eyes suddenly open,
and her gaze pass reluctantly around the room, as if forced to a
curiosity against which she secretly rebelled.

[Illustration]

"I think Mrs. Urquhart will do very well now," was his hurried remark at
this sight. He evidently wished to be rid of me, and though I hated
to leave her, I really found nothing to say in contradiction to his
statement, for she certainly looked completely restored. I therefore
turned away with a heavy heart toward the door, when the young wife,
suddenly throwing out her arms, exclaimed:

"Do not leave me in this horrible room alone! I am afraid of
it--actually afraid! Couldn't you have found some spot in the house less
gloomy, Edwin?"

I came back.

"There are plenty of rooms--" I began.

But he interrupted me without any ceremony.

"I chose this room, Honora, for its convenience. There is nothing
horrible about it, and when the lamps are lit you will find it quite
pleasant. Do not be foolish. We sleep here or nowhere, for I cannot
consent to go upstairs."

She answered nothing, but I saw her eyes go traveling once again around
the walls, followed in a furtive way by his. Whereupon I looked about
me, too, and tried to get a stranger's impression of the place. I was
astonished at its effect upon my imagination. Though I had been in and
out of the room fifty times before I had never noticed till now the
extreme dismalness and desolation of its appearance.

Once used as an auxiliary parlor, it had that air of uninhabitableness
which clings to such rooms, together with a certain something else,
equally unpleasant, to which at that moment I could give no name, and
for which I could neither find then nor now any suffic