rcy tell me. I implore
of you, tell me."

"Why, Gertrude, you seem to me to fancy that, because I don't talk about
what is passing, that I don't see it either. Now this is quite a
mistake," said Marston, calmly and resolutely--"I have long observed your
growing dislike of Mademoiselle de Barras. I have thought it over; this
fracas of today has determined me; it is decisive. I suppose you now wish
her to go, as earnestly as you once wished her to stay. You need not
answer. I know it. I neither ask nor care to whose fault I am to
attribute these changed feelings--female caprice accounts sufficiently
for it; but whatever the cause, the effect is undeniable; and the only
way to deal satisfactorily with it is, to dismiss mademoiselle at once.
You need take no part in the matter; I take it upon myself. Tomorrow
morning she shall have left this house. I have said it, and am perfectly
resolved."

As he thus spoke, as if to avoid the possibility of any further
discussion, he turned abruptly from her, and left the room.

The extreme agitation which she had just undergone combined with her
physical delicacy to bring on an hysterical attack; and poor Mrs.
Marston, with an aching head and a heavy heart, lay down upon her bed.
She had swallowed an opiate, and before ten o'clock upon that night, an
eventful one as it proved, she had sunk into a profound slumber.

Some hours after this, she became in a confused way conscious of her
husband's presence in the room. He was walking, with an agitated mien, up
and down the chamber, and casting from time to time looks of great
trouble toward the bed where she lay. Though the presence of her husband
was a strange and long unwonted occurrence there, at such an hour, and
though she felt the strangeness of the visit, the power of the opiate
overwhelmed her so, that she could only see this apparition gliding
slowly back and forward before her, with the passive wonder and curiosity
with which one awaits the issue of an interesting dream.

For a time she lay once more in an uneasy sleep; but still, throughout
even this, she was conscious of his presence; and when, a little while
after, she again saw him, he was not walking to and fro before the foot
of the bed, but sitting beside her, with one hand laid upon the pillow on
which her head was resting, the other supporting his chin. He was looking
steadfastly upon her, with a changed face, an expression of bitter
sorrow, compunction, and tendernes