e
saw clearly enough, in this hour of revulsion, that with his
temperament and training such a union could never have been happy. If
all the world had been ignorant of the dark secret, it would always
have been in his own thoughts, or at least never far away. Each fault
of hers that the close daily association of husband and wife might
reveal,--the most flawless of sweethearts do not pass scathless through
the long test of matrimony,--every wayward impulse of his children,
every defect of mind, morals, temper, or health, would have been
ascribed to the dark ancestral strain. Happiness under such conditions
would have been impossible.

When Tryon lay awake in the early morning, after a few brief hours of
sleep, the business which had brought him to Patesville seemed, in the
cold light of reason, so ridiculously inadequate that he felt almost
ashamed to have set up such a pretext for his journey. The prospect,
too, of meeting Dr. Green and his family, of having to explain his
former sudden departure, and of running a gauntlet of inquiry
concerning his marriage to the aristocratic Miss Warwick of South
Carolina; the fear that some one at Patesville might have suspected a
connection between Rena's swoon and his own flight,--these
considerations so moved this impressionable and impulsive young man
that he called a bell-boy, demanded an early breakfast, ordered his
horse, paid his reckoning, and started upon his homeward journey
forthwith. A certain distrust of his own sensibility, which he felt to
be curiously inconsistent with his most positive convictions, led him
to seek the river bridge by a roundabout route which did not take him
past the house where, a few hours before, he had seen the last fragment
of his idol shattered beyond the hope of repair.

The party broke up at an early hour, since most of the guests were
working-people, and the travelers were to make an early start next day.
About nine in the morning, Wain drove round to Mis' Molly's. Rena's
trunk was strapped behind the buggy, and she set out, in the company of
Wain, for her new field of labor. The school term was only two months
in length, and she did not expect to return until its expiration. Just
before taking her seat in the buggy, Rena felt a sudden sinking of the
heart.

"Oh, mother," she whispered, as they stood wrapped in a close embrace,
"I'm afraid to leave you. I left you once, and it turned out so
miserably."

"It'll turn out bett