during the passage, and for weeks following our
arrival, and so the time slipped rapidly by without the consummation
of my hopes, and though he gave me a pleasant home and everything
that I wished for in the house where we lived, even allowing it to
appear that I was his wife, we had not been here long before I saw
that he was beginning to tire of me. I did everything I could to keep
his love, I studied tirelessly to master the language of the country,
and kept myself posted upon art and subjects which interested him
most, in order to make myself companionable to him. Time after time I
entreated him to fight the wrong he was doing me and another, who
would soon come either into the shelter of his fatherhood or to
inherit the stigma of a dishonored mother; but he always had some
excuse with which to put me off. At last this little one came"--she
said, folding the child more closely in her arms--"and I had something
pure and sweet to love, even though I was heart-broken over knowing
that a blight must always rest upon his life, and something to occupy
the weary hours which, at times, hung so heavily upon my hands. After
that Emil seemed to become more and more indifferent to me--there
would be weeks at a time that I would not see him at all; I used
sometimes to think that the boy was a reproach to him, and he could
not bear the stings of his own conscience in his presence."

"Ah," interposed Edith, with a scornful curl of her red lips, "such
men have no conscience; they live only to gratify their selfish
impulses."

"Perhaps; while those they wrong live on and on, with a never-dying
worm gnawing at their vitals," returned her companion, repressing a
sob.

"At last," she resumed, "I began to grow jealous of him, and to spy
upon his movements. I discovered that he went a great deal to one of
the up-town hotels, and I sometimes saw him go out with a handsome
woman, whom I afterward learned was his sister--the Mrs. Goddard, who
lives here, and who visits New York several times every year. I did
not mind so much when I discovered the relationship between them,
although I suffered many a bitter pang to see how fond they were of
each other, while I was starving for some expression of his love.

"This went on for nearly two years; then about two months ago, Emil
disappeared from New York, without saying anything to me of his
intentions, although he left plenty of money deposited to my account.
He was always generous in that