I.
The clock had long since struck midnight, yet Still the young wife waited for her husband.
It was the first time he had ever left her alone in the evening. They had been married three months,—three happy, blissful months, the young wife had thought till now!
"I will not be in till late/' he had said, on leaving after dinner. " Two or three of my old, bachelor friends are in town, and I have promised to take supper with them. It would be as well, perhaps," he continued, glancing another way, "not to wait up for me."
At first the evening was not so lonely as she had expected. She brought out her husband's slippers, arranged his dressing-gown, and drew his favorite arm-chair up before the fire. "He will not be out late, after all," she said, as she did this. "He thinks to surprise me." And smiling to herself, in the consciousness of having all ready for him, she sat down, took up the last book he had given her, and began quietly to read.
Eight, and then nine o'clock struck, when fading he did not come, she rose with a sigh, and laid aside her volume. "He will be late after all," she said. "But I suppose he has so much to talk about." And with this excuse for his delay, she sighed again, and after awhile resumed her book.
The young wife was still fell of romance. Idolized by her family, and with no experience of life beyond the loving circle of her early home, die had married with the too common dream feat existence was never to be darkened by a dead. Her husband was from a distant city, a man of fortune, finished in his manners, and with a singularly handsome person. Willingly she had left all to fellow him. But no#, sitting feus alone, a feeling gradually arose in her heart, feat he ought not to have left her. She was ashamed of it at first, and strove to conquer it; she had no right to expect him, she said, till ten o'clock: it was natural, perhaps, for husbands to wteh occasioifelly to spend an evening wife their bachelor friends.
But it was a weary time till ten o'clock. She often found her thoughts waUcfefmg. At last fee dock struck
"Now he will surely come," she exclaimed, throwing down her book: and rising, she went to fee window in order to watch for him. It was bright moonlight without, and every one approaching could be distinctly seen. But still her husband did not come.
For nearly half an hour she remained looking out Gradually her feelings changed. "He does does not love me as be did," she said, "or he wouldn't neglect me so."
Finally, yielding to pride, she closed fee shutters, and again took up her book. "When he comes in," she said, "he shall find me reading, as if his absence had not concerned me."
But she could only pretend to read. Her eyes followed the characters, while her thoughts were with her husband. Again and again she turned back, determined to keep fee sense in her mind, yet as often she discovered, after a page or two, that she had utterly failed.
The clock striking eleven reused her. Her thoughts new took a new turn. Something must have happened, she said, and she reproached herself for having been vexed. Perhaps he had been taken sick on his way home. Perhaps he had been run over. Perhaps, for fee had heard of such things, he had been knocked down, robbed, and left senseless and bleeding.
These fears having once taken hold of her, fee could not rest quietly in the house Going to fee street deer, fee stood there, unbonneted, eagerly leaking up and down the street. Had she known where to go, fee would have set forth at once: but she reflected that, if fee left the house, her husband might be brought back in her absence. The streets were now almost deserted, and the moon had sunk behind fee rooftops, so that silence and comparative darkness filled the long and ghostly thoroughfare. But occasionally a step would be heard approaching. As it slowly came nearer and nearer her suspense would be almost intolerable. Tet when it arrived, and the form of a stranger only was seen, fee could have welcomed even suspense again.
