ng her in any
of these rooms, he ascended to the second floor and sought her in their
own apartment. Still not finding her, his alarm became agony.

"I will search every square yard within these walls," he said, as he
hurried through all the empty chambers of that floor, and then went up
into the attic.

There, in the lumber-room--the chamber of desolation--he found his wife,
lying with her face downwards on the floor. He hastened towards her,
fearing that she was in a swoon. But no; she was only exhausted by the
violence of her emotions.

Without saying a word, he lifted her in his arms as if she had been a
child. She was too faint now to resist him. He carried her down stairs
to her own chamber and laid her on the sofa, and while he gently
smoothed the damp dark hair from her pale brow, he whispered softly:

"My wife, I know now what has troubled you. It was a great error, my own
dear Sybil. You have no cause to doubt me, or to distress yourself."

She did not reply, but with a tearless sob, turned her face to the wall.

"It was of _you_ that I was thinking, my beloved, when I wrote that name
on the cards," he continued, as he still smoothed her hair with his
light mesmeric touch. She did not repel his caresses, but neither did
she reply to his words. And he saw, by the heaving of her bosom and the
quivering of her lips, that the storm had not yet subsided.

He essayed once more to reassure her.

"Dear wife," he earnestly commenced, "you believe that my affections are
inconstant, and that they have wandered from you?"

She answered by a nod and another tearless sob, but she did not look
around or speak to him.

"Yet withal you believe me to be a man of truthful words?"

Again she nodded acquiescence.

"Then, dear Sybil, you must believe my words when I assure you, on my
sacred truth and honor, that your suspicions of me are utterly
erroneous."

Now she turned her head, opened her large dark eyes in astonishment, and
gazed into his earnest face.

"As Heaven hears me, my own dear wife, I love no other woman in the
world but you."

"But--you are almost always with _her_!" at length replied Sybil, with
another dry sob.

"I confess that, dear; but it was because you were almost always absent
on your domestic affairs."

"You hang enraptured over her, when she sings and plays!"

"Enraptured with her music, darling, not with her. To me she is a prima
donna, whose performances I must admire and applaud--