sooner or later,
accept with joy the offer of some months of a maidenly liberty. Amy
would not allow herself to think that her wedded life was at an end.
With a woman's strange faculty of closing her eyes against facts that
do not immediately concern her, she tasted the relief of the present and
let the future lie unregarded. Reardon would get out of his difficulties
sooner or later; somebody or other would help him; that was the dim
background of her agreeable sensations.

He suffered, no doubt. But then it was just as well that he should.
Suffering would perhaps impel him to effort. When he communicated to her
his new address--he could scarcely neglect to do that--she would send a
not unfriendly letter, and hint to him that now was his opportunity for
writing a book, as good a book as those which formerly issued from his
garret-solitude. If he found that literature was in truth a thing of the
past with him, then he must exert himself to obtain a position worthy of
an educated man. Yes, in this way she would write to him, without a word
that could hurt or offend.

She ate an excellent breakfast, and made known her enjoyment of it.

'I am so glad!' replied her mother. 'You have been getting quite thin
and pale.'

'Quite consumptive,' remarked John, looking up from his newspaper.
'Shall I make arrangements for a daily landau at the livery stables
round here?'

'You can if you like,' replied his sister; 'it would do both mother and
me good, and I have no doubt you could afford it quite well.'

'Oh, indeed! You're a remarkable young woman, let me tell you.
By-the-bye, I suppose your husband is breakfasting on bread and water?'

'I hope not, and I don't think it very likely.'

'Jack, Jack!' interposed Mrs Yule, softly.

Her son resumed his paper, and at the end of the meal rose with an
unwonted briskness to make his preparations for departure.

CHAPTER XIX. THE PAST REVIVED

Nor would it be true to represent Edwin Reardon as rising to the new day
wholly disconsolate. He too had slept unusually well, and with returning
consciousness the sense of a burden removed was more instant than that
of his loss and all the dreary circumstances attaching to it. He had no
longer to fear the effects upon Amy of such a grievous change as from
their homelike flat to the couple of rooms he had taken in Islington;
for the moment, this relief helped him to bear the pain of all that had
happened and the uneasiness which trouble