rom the window-pane, she looked
wistfully out in the direction of Richard's home. Yes, there it was, and
a light shining from the sitting-room window, as if they expected her.
But Ethie was not going there, and with something like a sigh as she
thought of Andy so near, yet separated so widely from her, she turned
from the window and rested her tired head upon her hands while they
stayed at Olney. It was only a moment they stopped, but to Ethie it
seemed an age, and her heart almost stopped its beating when she heard
the voice of Terrible Tim just outside the car. He was not coming in, as
she found after a moment of breathless waiting; he was only speaking to
an acquaintance, who stepped inside and took a seat by the stove, just
as the train plunged again into the darkness, leaving behind a fiery
track to mark its progress across the level prairie.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE DESERTED HUSBAND

Richard had been very successful in St. Louis. The business which took
him there had been more than satisfactorily arranged. He had collected a
thousand-dollar debt he never expected to get, and had been everywhere
treated with the utmost deference and consideration, as a man whose
worth was known and appreciated. But Richard was ill at ease, and his
face wore a sad, gloomy expression, which many remarked, wondering what
could be the nature of the care so evidently preying upon him. Do what
he might, he could not forget the white, stony face which had looked at
him so strangely in the gray morning, nor shut out the icy tones in
which Ethie had last spoken to him. Besides this, Richard was thinking
of all he had said to her in the heat of passion, and wishing he could
recall it in part at least. He was very indignant, very angry still, for
he believed her guilty of planning to meet Frank Van Buren at the party
and leave him at home, while his heart beat with keen throbs of pain
when he remembered that Ethie's first love was not given to him--that
she would have gone to her grave more willingly than she went with him
to the altar; but he need not have been so harsh with her--that was no
way to make her love him. Kindness must win her back should she ever be
won, and impatient to be reconciled, if reconciliation were now
possible, Richard chafed at the necessary delays which kept him a day
longer in St. Louis than he had at first intended.

Ethie had been gone just a week when he at last found himself in the
train which would take him